


We're All Stories In The End

by idelthoughts



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Relationships, Escapism, F/M, Familial Love, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortal!Lucas, M/M, Mortal!Henry, Other, Platonic Life Partners, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sexuality Crisis, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5322137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas Wahl has been kicking around for a few centuries, and working as a medical examiner is just one stop amongst many.  He's seen a lot over the years, but he's always been content to be a secondary character in the world, watching life happen around him while he passes unnoticed.  However, Henry Morgan, a PhD student taking up lab space in his morgue for the coming year, is a little too observant for Lucas' comfort.  Lucas may be dragged onto the mainstage, whether he likes it or not.  Meanwhile Henry, in New York to forget the burdens of his past, his family and lost loves, finds that they are not so easy to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Charmingwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charmingwolf/gifts).



> This is for Lucas, you beautiful human being, you. This may or may not bear any resemblance to what you asked for, but there sure is a lot of it. Sorry/not sorry I wrote you a novel instead of a drabble.
> 
> So yeah, this is my very best attempt at shipping Henry and Lucas. I gave it my all. Instead, it became my manifesto on the value of platonic love, escapism, honesty in relationships, and the power of being noticed.
> 
> I've taken Forever, hacked it to pieces, then hodge-podged it all back together into something that might or might not be like the show it came from by the time all is said and done. Sort of like how ketchup might have been a tomato once upon a time.
> 
> Thank you so much to shiplizard and binz for listening to me ramble on (and on, and on) about this fic and help me sort through the snarls of creating this AU, and to pinkelephant5 for helping me turn it into a fic with an ending, and bearholdingashark for many, many evenings of co-writing. Also, a big thank you to birdthatlookslikeastick for letting me talk out all my plotting problems while he was trapped in a car with me for six hours, and for every evening he's listened to me rant on and on about it.
> 
> It takes a village, people.

**New York, May 2014**

Henry’s flight from London arrived an hour late to JFK Airport, and coincided with several large flights arriving from Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Toronto. The US Customs and Immigration wickets were swamped, and it was hours before he was beckoned forward.

The Customs officer behind the plexiglass barrier held out her hand expectantly, and Henry gave over his passport.

“What’s your business in the United States this trip?”

“I have a one-year internship position at New York University Medical College, a research exchange for my PhD program at Oxford University.”

That made the customs officer look up at him over the rim of her glasses. She held up his red British passport and looked from him to it, comparing his face with the passport photo. He smiled politely, calculated for perfectly harmless innocence. She raised an eyebrow at his friendliness, unimpressed, before she scanned it through the reader with a grunt.

“You have your visa?”

He handed over the relevant paperwork, and she gave another grunt before stamping the forms. She slid his passport and stack of papers back to him.

“Have a good year,” she said. “Oh, and happy birthday.” She cracked a small smile, proving that smiling was not, in fact, against US Customs policy as he’d begun to suspect.

“Thank you,” he said, and scooped up his suitcase.

As a taxi took him towards the heart of New York, as he crossed over into Manhattan, Henry couldn’t help craning his neck to look up at the buildings looming above him, at the crush and press of people on the busy mid-day streets.

New York; it had a magic all its own, a scent and flavour different from London. The cosmopolitan crowd could have been any city in the world, but the feel of it was definitely different. Even though he’d spent the whole day travelling, he was eager to get out into the city.

It was his twenty-third birthday and though not a particularly notable number, it was to be the marker between his old life and his new. New York was a city made for rebuilding and reshaping. If one was to begin again with only his name remaining the same, this was the place for it.

There was nothing here to make him remember. A clean slate.

“Time for a change,” he said to himself quietly.

This would be his own story, his own adventure. It was long past time for him to stand alone and learn to rely on himself.

 


	2. Uncle Luke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm perilously tempted to write the complete adventures of Bertie Bruce.

**Three Months Later**

The corpse stretched out in the middle of the park square spelled an all-around boring story.  Lucas nudged one splayed out hand—rigid, so not fresh, but not too old.  Defensive wounds, stabbed in the gut, roughed up a bit.  Pockets turned inside out, signs of rings yanked off.  

“You got an approximate time of death?”

Lucas shoved his hands in his pockets and looking up at the two inquiring detectives, a man and a woman, standing nearby with their notebooks poised for notes. His usuals. He thought they might have been starting to like him, which meant he should probably put some effort into learning their names. Which meant asking their names. Which meant admitting he still didn’t know them after all this time, so maybe not right now.  Lucas nudged the arm again, wiggled it back and forth a little.  He shifted down to a foot and shoved that in the same manner.

“About 2am, I’d say.”

“Okay Doc, got it.  Thanks.”

“At the ready with your daily dose of dead things knowledge,” Lucas said, giving them a wink and the guns, fingers cocked to shoot them a quick _pow-pow_ , then back into his pockets as though holstering them.

Predictably, she rolled her eyes, he looked vaguely embarrassed, and after a significant look at each other, both of them turned away to return to their work.

Okay, maybe not _like_ like him, but they were definitely getting used to him. Maybe next time he’d ask their names.

Lucas made quick arrangements to return the body to the morgue, and then made his way off to the subway to return to the precinct.  He wasn’t in the mood to wait around the crime scene, and preferred a walk.  Besides, it took him past that little comic shop on St. Mark’s, and a new issue of _Soul Slasher_ was out this week and he’d not had a chance yet to pick it up.

Abe was always pointing out that things like Amazon shipping were much easier than running all over town, but Lucas had always preferred the experience of walking into a shop, of the smell of printing ink and glue, with some grumpy shop owner watching every move from behind the counter.  The experience of acquisition was as great as reading his newest find.

In two hundred years he’d never stopped loving book shops and popular fiction.  Pop culture and it’s little sub-genres said so much about people and their trends.  Like death and taxes, pop culture was inevitable, and eventually bound to become a mainstream love.  He’d always told Abe that, and was he ever vindicated when superhero movies started making their blockbuster debuts.  He’d dragged Abe to the movies mostly out of smug glee.  He hadn’t been able to adequately suppress his gloating when Abe secretly enjoyed them.

Lucas picked up two copies of _Soul Slasher_ —one for him, one for Abe.  What was weird Uncle Lucas for if not torturing his nephew, no matter how old he was?

On his way to the counter to make his purchase, a book display caught his eye.  The shop was known for picking up publications from around the world, and England’s latest release, trumpeted with much excitement there but barely heard of in the States, was proudly set in the middle of a table of picks from the various shop clerks.

His reaction was instinctive—he stopped at the table and plucked the book up, running his hand over the title.  

_Bertie at War: the Lost Years of Bertie Bruce._

He was absorbed by the cover artwork he and Abe had agonized over, trying to make sure it was perfect—a hand-painted replica of a treasured picture, the poses preserved with the faces changed just enough.  It depicted a man and woman, his arm around her shoulders.  The man was marveling down at the woman, who was in turn beaming at a happy little infant cradled in her arms.  They were dressed in World War II uniforms, him from the US, she from England, and the baby was swaddled in a cream blanket.  Behind them, the stylized backdrop of a military camp, a dreamier, prettier version of the nightmarish landscape of the temporary field clinics set up outside Bergen.

Lucas flipped the book over, and on the back cover, beautiful and distinguished as always to the very end, the portrait of Abigail.  Smiling, hair pinned up, the wrinkles and crow's feet of her later years mapping every moment of a life well lived.  Beneath her photo was the author’s bio, which Lucas could repeat word-for-word in his sleep by now, painstakingly crafted to pay honour to her memory.

Twenty years gone, and he still missed her.

On the display table, artfully arranged in a stack, were the previous ten books comprising _The Life and Times of Bertie Bruce_ series, written and published by Abigail over the years.  

The books contained old stories, ones Lucas had shared with her on many a long quiet evening as they sat together. Everything was obfuscated well enough to protect him, and published in a country Lucas rarely visited in order to prevent the overlap.  

They meant the world to him, every single one.  She’d made his life seem real, at a time when he was starting to doubt his own reality.  Lucas was Bertie, Bertie was him, and though the world was smaller than it had been in 1950 and the series had gained a popularity, and though there was more of the real him in these pages than in the previous books, Lucas was still comforted to have this newest tome in print.

It was Abigail’s last story. She’d hidden it away, she’d never shown him, maybe because of how close it was to the truth. They’d only found it two years ago when Abe was cleaning out old boxes from the attic.  They’d polished it up with loving care and sent it to the publisher, who’d been wildly excited by this ‘lost years’ marketing opportunity. Lucas was just glad to see her face again, even if it was only a picture.

“If you ask me, it’s by far the weakest of the series.  I’m not sure why they published it.  It’s like Wahl went all self-insert on Bertie’s story.  Jarring, you know?”

Lucas looked up to see the store clerk at his side, lip curled as he looked at the book in Lucas’ hand. Lucas stared at him for a few seconds, then thrust it at the clerk with a scowl.

“I’m going to buy it.”

The clerk, sensing Lucas’ sudden irritation, wisely shut his mouth and made the sale.

 

***

  
Lucas was barely through the OCME morgue doors before the usual question was called out from the corner.

“Cause of death?”

Lucas stopped at the first lab bench off to the side.  Henry Morgan, surrounded as usual by sample slides and his notes, was deep in his work.  He hadn’t bothered to look up as he asked, as was his style.  

“Stab wound to the abdomen—exsanguination.”

“Time of death?”

“Around two in the morning.”

At that, Henry looked up and scanned Lucas over from head to toe, eyes sharp and keen.  For someone who was all of twenty-three years old, he had a way of making you feel like you’d been called on the carpet at school for questioning.  Even several centuries of experience hadn’t managed to grant Lucas that kind of gravitas.  Lucas waited to see if Henry was going to ask any more questions.  

The game of Guess The Circumstances had developed over the three months of Henry’s internship in the OCME, mostly because Henry couldn’t keep his curiosity to himself.  Lucas had limited Henry to ten questions once he was through the door to see if he could determine the case details, and most of the time he was right.  A little eerie, but cool.

“In a park?  And you unconcerned enough about meeting the body back at the morgue to stop and pick up comic books on the way?  Mugging, then.”  Henry made a vaguely disappointed noise and returned to his microscope.  Apparently it wasn’t an interesting enough death to hold his attention any further.

Lucas was about to ask how Henry knew he’d stopped on the way back, then noticed the barest corner of the telltale purple plastic bag poking out of his messenger bag.  Henry didn’t miss much.

“Good thing I’m not making bets with you on this, I’d be losing hard.”

Henry grunted but didn’t look up from his slides. Lucas continued on to his office.

Though Henry affected a disinterested, bored air whenever the death seemed too routine, he could tell Henry enjoyed the game as well.  After all, how interesting could it be cataloguing samples from every corpse coming through New York’s morgues?  Henry’s PhD project was certainly going to have a large enough sample size, given that he still had another nine months to go.

Lucas threw his jacket and bag onto the chair next to his desk and settled into his own chair to start up the inevitable paperwork.  He wasn’t sure exactly why he’d taken this promotion to assistant chief medical examiner, but he was here now, so might as well do his best with it.

He didn’t even get to the autopsy that afternoon, and so the body was sent to the fridge while Lucas poured over the backlog of files piled up around him, ploughing through them until he finally closed up the last one with a relieved groan. He glanced up at the clock—just in time, the clock was ticking over to six. Thank goodness, because overtime was not his idea of fun.  

Over the years he’d turned into a clock-watcher.  A steady routine helped keep the days rolling on, gave him the satisfaction of a job well done, and still plenty of downtime for his own pursuits. Boring, maybe, but the predictability gave him a solid, contented baseline to work from. Don’t rock the boat was his main motto, when it came down to it. Simple, steady, easy. He stood up and stretched his stiff back, grabbed up his bag and jacket and flipped off the lights in his office.

The 11th Precinct OCME staff weren’t slouches, but they stuck to their hours as well, and at a few minutes past six everyone was always cleared out. All that was left at quitting time was for Lucas to turn out the lights and lock up behind him.  Same old, same old.  

Up until recently, that was.  

Lucas stopped outside his door to the sight of Henry at his bench, face still glued to his microscope.  

Another night of chasing Henry out of the lab.  Great.

To Henry’s right was a sheaf of papers. He had a pen in hand and was scratching notes on them without looking up from his examination.  On his other side lay the pile of slides he’d been plugging through all day.  As Lucas walked towards him across the morgue, Henry pulled the slide free and set it carefully in the tray, then selected a different one from the other tray and positioned it in the microscope.  From what Lucas could see, he was only halfway through his current batch of samples.

Lucas stood in front of the bench opposite Henry for a full minute before Henry lifted his head to take another slide and finally noticed him.  He straightened and blinked myopically.

“Dr. Wahl, hello.”  Henry’s voice was scratchy, as though he hadn’t spoken all day—possibly since he’d talked with Lucas in the late morning.  Given the usual schedule the PhD student set for himself, Lucas wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.

“I said you can call me Lucas.  I’m not your boss.  Anyway, closing time,” Lucas said, shimmering his hands with Fosse flair.  “Don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Henry frowned at him in confusion—or maybe it was annoyance—and Lucas dropped his hands to his sides with a defeated sigh.    He probably didn’t get the reference.  Sure, Henry was English, but even so, it should have twigged _something_.  

Guess they had people raised in caves in England too.  If it didn’t come from a book with a boring cover or inside a building with scrollwork and columns, Henry didn’t know a damn thing about it.

Henry rooted in his pocket and pulled out his pocket watch, then his eyebrows shot up.

“My apologies.  Again,” he added, giving Lucas a guilty smile.  “I can have this cleaned up in ten minutes.”

Lucas unslung his bag and pulled up a rolling chair.  He straddled it and propped his chin on his fists on the back of the chair to watch Henry as he made notes of where he was in his samples and got everything set to begin again the next day.

Same thing every day.  Work, work, work.  He half-expected that Henry had a lab at home, and the only time he wasn’t staring into a microscope was when he was ferrying himself between the two.  

Or maybe Henry was business by day, party by night.  When Henry smiled—which happened on occasion, he’d certainly seen it, and boy was it memorable—Henry lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.  Maybe he was out playing the nightlife scene when he wasn’t here.  A guy like Henry would probably knock ‘em dead wherever he went, if he wanted to.  

Lucas knew a few of the lab techs had raging crushes.  Hilarious to watch them in action as they found very poor excuses to chat with Henry, even though their work didn’t remotely overlap.  Henry seemed to revel in the attention, but other than taking the time to briefly talk with them, he never initiated any interaction.  His daily game with Lucas about the crime scene corpses was usually the only reaching out Henry did.

“I haven’t seen you go to pub night yet.”  Lucas twisted the chair to follow Henry’s progress over to the lab samples fridge and back to the bench.  

“You don’t go either,” Henry said, not looking up.

“Yeah, but nobody wants to hang with the boss,” Lucas said. “What’s your excuse? What do you do after work?”

Henry raised an eyebrow as he wiped down the equipment.  

“Why so curious?”

“Come on, Henry.  Three months you’ve been here, and I hardly know anything about you.”

“I’m a private person,”  Henry responded smoothly.

“Yeah, that’s kind of obvious, but a year is gonna feel like a long time if you don’t make some friends.  New York’s a great city—make the most of your research internship here.  Get out, live a little.  What do you like to do for fun?”

“I enjoy my free time sufficiently, there’s no need to concern yourself unduly.”

Lucas’ curiosity didn’t seem to phase him.  Instead, it seemed to entertain him, and Lucas was pretty sure Henry was enjoying torturing him.  Lucas was never very good at letting his curiosity go unsatisfied, and Henry was so tight-lipped about anything outside work that he might as well not exist once he left the precinct.  

“That’s the king of all non-answers, dude,”  Lucas huffed.

“Not everyone’s life is an open book, Lucas.” Henry grinned widely.

Lucas snorted at that.  No, only some people’s lives.  His, for example.  

Which reminded him, he’d left his purchases by his desk.  As Henry picked up his bag, an antique leather satchel with straps and buckles, and began to tuck his papers papers in, Lucas stood and jerked his thumb over his shoulder back towards his office.

“Forgot something. I’ll be back.”

Lucas returned to pick up the stack of three books off the corner of his desk.  He’d flipped through the graphic novel at coffee time, and now he lingered over the _Bertie Bruce_ novel on top them.  On impulse, Lucas flipped open to the dedication page.

_To L, with all my love and gratitude._

Lucas closed the book and pressed the stack to his chest, as though he could press the sentiment right through into his heart.  She dedicated every book the same. Every time he’d told her she didn’t need to, and every time she rolled her eyes and kissed his cheek.  Abe had slipped it in this time, despite Lucas’ objections.

“ _She’d have wanted it there,_ ” Abe had said firmly, and that was that.

“I’m ready to go.”  

Lucas jumped, caught by surprise by Henry leaning through his office door.  Henry’s eyes narrowed and zeroed in on the books in his hands.  He half-smiled, flicking a finger towards the book.

“Interesting literary choice.”

“Oh,” Lucas stuttered, not certain what to say, “I—uh, it’s—” he started, holding the books tighter to his chest.  “Well, you know.  Um, it’s—it’s cute.  I know it’s for kids, but—”

“ _Soul Slasher_ is a children’s comic?”

“Graphic novel,” he corrected automatically, then squinted at Henry.  “Wait, what?”  He looked down, and saw that the novel was pressed to his chest, dwarfed by the two copies of _Soul Slasher_ over it, and Henry couldn’t see it.  He looked up with a weak laugh.  “Oh, yeah.  No, not really.  Not that I have a problem with kids’ comics though.  I mean, they’re good too.”

Henry was still staring at him with his eyebrows drawn together, and Lucas very purposefully clamped his mouth sut.  He turned around and shoved the books into his bag.  

It shouldn’t bother him. The _Bertie Bruce_ books weren’t a secret.  However, this one tugged at a few too many personal heartstrings still and he didn’t feel like wading through that river right now.  Lucas nattered on, trying to cover his discomfort.

“I dunno, kids books are great.  Lots of real stuff in there, you know?”  Lucas cringed at his words.  No, not the direction he was going for.  “I mean, you know.  Kids deal with the real world too.  There’s lots of crap we all have to put up with, no matter how old we are.”

He turned back to Henry, who lowered his gaze, licked his lips, and nodded hesitantly.

“Yes, I suppose.”  He ducked his head, looking vaguely embarrassed, possibly on Lucas’ behalf, he wasn’t sure.  

But it was kind of a cute look on him, possibly because of its rarity.

Lucas shook away that thought, because god knew the last thing he needed was to entertain his own crush on the weird stuffy English kid who’d set up camp in the corner of the morgue, slowly but surely cataloguing a tissue sample from every single corpse coming through their doors.  It was a monumental task, but if anyone could pull it off, Lucas was sure Henry could.

It was admirable.  He admired Henry.

Around this time Lucas realized he was gawking. Henry was looking back at him with a hint of a bemused smile, his bag over his shoulder and ready to go, so Lucas forced a laugh and then turned to head for the door.

Two hundred years later, Lucas was just as awkward as the day he first died.  No way he’d ever pull off Henry’s smooth confidence.  Even embarrassed and flustered, Henry was as affected as a mountain weathering a storm.

Life might be interesting, but it sure wasn’t fair.

“Anyway, let’s head out,” Lucas said.

Henry nodded and trailed after Lucas as they left the OCME for the evening.

 

***

  
The slap of the book dropping on his desk made Abe look up from his ledgers.

Lucas was grinning down at him, which usually meant Abe was about to be annoyed.  Sure enough, in front of him, one of those god-awful graphic novels Lucas was obsessed with.  Heaven help them, he had an entire store full of Lucas’ accumulated collections over the years, and he was always bringing home more, like a crow enthusiastically hoarding all the shiny baubles it came across.

However, Lucas had proven himself to have an eye for collectibles, which translated to the profitable business that Abe now ran with Lucas’ acquisitions as stock.  So, much as they made him roll his eyes, _Soul Slasher_ was likely going to be A Thing.  If not now, then someday soon it’d be lining the shelves of _Abe’s Collectibles_.

“Thank you for that.”

“Knew you’d appreciate it,”  Lucas said.

Abe made an exasperated noise, which didn’t so much as make Lucas blink, given that he was used to Abe’s ways as much as Abe was used to Lucas.  They’d been living together now for three years, and Lucas was the same as he’d ever been, the same joker he’d been right from the start of Abe’s memories.  At this point, he’d be worried if Uncle Luke stopped needling him for kicks.

“You’re running late today,”  Abe noted.

“Yeah.  Kicking Henry out of the morgue again.  He took a little longer packing up than usual.  You know, for someone who is so precise and organized, he can completely forget about the rest of the world.”

Lucas, on autopilot, had begun resorting the disordered magazines on the table beside Abe’s desk, resetting them to proper date order after they’d been shuffled by patrons all week.  Abe noted the tone of fond amusement in Lucas’ voice—and the fact that he seemed to completely miss the irony of his statement.  If there was a single person in this world who was better at forgetting about the real world than Lucas Wahl, Abe had yet to find them.  

“Can you give him a key or something?”  Abe asked.  “They can’t expect you to babysit a PhD student.”

“Nah, it’s not babysitting.  Sure, he makes me late sometimes, but he’s fun to have around.  Did I ever tell you, he does this thing where he can guess—”

“—How someone was murdered in ten questions or less.  Yeah, you may have mentioned it once or twice,” Abe interrupted.

Lucas paused his rifling of the magazines, then continued on, pulling out an issue from the back end of the crate and slipping it in near the front.

“Well, come on, you have to admit that’s pretty cool.  The guy has, like, a sixth sense about death.  He can kind of see it all—I mean, I worked for years trying to put all that stuff together, and he just slides in and bam! There it is.  And he’s got this attitude.  I bet he’d perform an autopsy like it was high tea.”  Lucas said the last with a terrible excuse for a British accent, and mimed holding a scalpel and making a long incision with his pinky finger flared out as though holding a tea cup.

Abe pulled off his glasses, studying Lucas as he smiled and chuckled to himself over his joke and went back to his sorting task.  This was possibly the first time in years that Abe had heard Lucas mention more than a few words about someone, and especially about work.  Lucas had the nine to five mentality, completely clocking out of work as soon as he left it.  Even though it seemed as though he liked his job, he didn’t make it his life.  That honour Lucas reserved for the fictional worlds he resided in.

To start, Abe had only learned of the mythical Henry because of the reams of legal paperwork Lucas had been forced to bring home in order to set up the PhD internship with the OCME.  Lucas had grumbled and whined about missing a day of the New York Comic Con to finish it, and had muttered “Thanks a lot, Henry Morgan,” while scribbling his signature over papers.

Normally that would have been about as much as Abe would have ever heard, but Henry, whoever he was, had made an impression.  For one thing, he kept his name.  Always Henry, not ‘Whiz Kid’ or ‘The British Invasion’ or anything that would have been Lucas’ usual style.  Three years in and still the only thing Abe knew about the two detectives Lucas usually served as on-scene M.E. for was that he called them ‘Stock Footage’ and ‘Venti Latte.’

Nicknames, general impressions, sweeping generalizations. Lucas recreated the people in his life as though they were characters in a story.

Henry, though—he got to be a real boy.  Lucas spoke in complimentary fashion about his intelligence, wittiness, and about his research project and so-called talent for death. He seemed to really like him, and in a genuine sense, not in his usual removed, observational way.

Abe was almost sure Lucas had made a friend, if such a thing were possible. He was a little ashamed to admit he wasn’t sure if he’d still been capable.

When Abigail had been in her last year, Lucas had tended to her with a consideration and patience Abe hadn’t known was in the guy, and after her death, it had been like someone had cut the power to a carnival. He’d shut down completely and been so removed that Abe had worried his Uncle Luke would take a walk out the door and never come back again.

Right about then was when Abe had pitched the idea of selling off Lucas’ collections. Lucas was huffing about getting rid of it all, and he begged Lucas to stay long enough to sort and catalogue everything.  That was twenty years ago, and he’d managed to draw Lucas back many times with questions about the shop.  Then, three years ago, Lucas returned, having drifted into medicine and pathology, fallen into a job at the OCME, and the rest was history.

“Maybe this is Henry’s way of spending time with you,” Abe said, eyebrow raised as he leaned forward, fascinated by Lucas’ interest.

“I think Henry’s got his own thing going on,” Lucas said dismissively.  “Probably works all night.  No, no, he’s probably a letter-writer.  Yeah, writing letters—you know, quill and inkwell style.  Inquiring after the estate, how _Maman_ is getting on….”

Abe’s shoulders slumped and he leaned back in his chair.  He had lost him.

Lucas was off into whatever headspace he occupied most days, slotting people into pre-made stories he composed for them.  Granted, Lucas had collected a lot of stories over the years, so usually his painted scenes were varied and interesting, almost always entertaining, but Lucas had grown to prefer them over actually getting to know people and learning their real, individual story. He missed his Uncle Luke, the guy who was so eager to embrace every new moment and new experience life had to offer.

Still, Henry had sunk in a little bit, and that was something.  

“It’s dinner time.  You wanna order in?  Indian?  Thai?”  Abe asked.  

Take-out was the way to Lucas’ heart—the greasier the better, he insisted, having told Abigail once upon a time that he was determined to die of heart disease at least once in his lifetime.  However, the first time Abigail had admitted to high cholesterol over a modest boiled dinner, Lucas had kept to health-conscious home-cooked meals and limited the grease to his takeout.

“Indian sounds great,” Lucas agreed.

They headed upstairs and Lucas threw down his bag on the dining room table and rooted out his phone. Once his phone call for takeout was done, Abe went to get dishes. Placing them on the table, he spotted a copy of _Bertie At War_ sitting on the top of Lucas’ open bag. He reached in and picked it up.

“What’s with this?”

Lucas looked up from his phone where he was poking away at some colourful app.  He saw what Abe was pointing to and Abe could see Lucas scroll through the index of excuses in his mind before giving up and deciding to tell the truth.  

“Some mouth-breather in the comic shop was slagging on the book.  I bought a copy because it bugged me.”

Lucas turned his attention back to the phone, with the exaggerated attitude of someone pretending very hard to be absorbed in their task.

“Okay.”  Abe stooped over and grabbed the book.  “I’ll just put this with the others, then, shall I?”

Lucas grunted, but didn’t respond other than that.

Abe did end up taking it into the spare room, and popped open the box of novels that the publishing house had shipped to him once the printing was complete.  On top was the original handwritten manuscript, in Abigail’s neat and tidy cursive.  Abe placed the extra novel in there and closed the box up.  

As a kid, he never really knew what made the two of them tick, but Mom and Uncle Luke had been two peas in a pod.  Lucas had travelled a great deal then, gone sometimes months at a stretch, but was always there when they needed him. Abe remembered evenings snuggled in Lucas’ lap, listening to Lucas talk until he fell asleep to the drone of his and Mom’s voices, and Abe’s dreams were filled with fanciful adventures and far-off places.

Abigail had stayed in nursing after coming to the States, but with the exhausting demands of work and motherhood, she’d spent many quiet nights at home with a pen in hand, or chatting with Lucas as he told stories of his life.

The first book Abigail wrote had been a risk.  To prepare her pitch, she’d dressed to the nines, hair and makeup perfect, which Abe later came to know was her protective armour against the world, before getting ready to tell Lucas. She’d hoped that he would not find it a betrayal of trust, even tweaked as they were to hide his identity.  

Lucas’ delight though, the sheer childish glee, had made them all break down into laughter, Abigail and Abe howling with laughter over Lucas’ dramatic rendition of the manuscript, read aloud and play-acted in the living room as he owned the part of Bertie. Lucas had hugged Abigail tight and told her that he couldn’t have imagined his stories put to better purpose, and encouraged her to publish them.

There were summer movie nights, and pawing through the latest releases at the comic shop, and evenings spent sneaking Abe into beat poet slams, and that pilgrimage to Big Sur. Lucas was as good a dad as Abe could ever have wished for.

As Abe aged it became just Lucas instead of Uncle Luke—or Dad, when Lucas would occasionally let him call him that, though for some reason he’d never really let it fly. When he was older, there were things like road trips to see musical acts, and a week in San Francisco—that one had left a few memories and images that Abe wished he could burn from his mind.  That odd little period when they’d looked the same age had led to more than one situation that Abe had fled out of a great desire to never, ever see Lucas naked ever, ever, again.

A fruitless wish, because of course there were _those_ trips.

Abe had hauled that gawky pale frame from the water a few times.  Not many, but enough.  He suspected there were many more, judging from the occasional times when Abigail had been tight-lipped and stiff. Afterwards Lucas always stayed for a while, attentive and carefully kind, as though trying to erase the distress it caused her. In those times of stress he retreated into his head, spouting stories and revelling in distracting himself and Abe with movies and comics. He would take Abe to Coney Island, and between riding all the rides until they were nearly sick, they would eat popcorn and make up stories about the people passing by.

Unfortunately that seemed to be Lucas’ permanent state now.  What he wouldn’t give to see that guy find just a little bit of that old enthusiasm for the real life around him.

After their satisfying Indian take-out dinner, Lucas drifted off when Abe was occupied with the dishes, damn him. Lucas was clever—more so than anyone usually gave him credit for.  What caught his attention, however, and whatever he chose to devote that intelligence to, was random and usually incomprehensible.  The entire catalogue of Ed Wood memorized start to finish?  Yep.  Doing the dishes without being asked?  Nope.  Lucas reserved his initiative and drive for only the things he cared about in life, and the rest—well, he did what he had to do.

Abe listened and heard the telltale faint creak of the basement stairs, and he sighed. Off to his underground cave, of course.

More often than not, Lucas’ pursuits and attitude made Abe feel like he had a shiftless dirtbag nephew living in the basement instead of a man more than three times his age.

 

***

  
Lucas had perfected his media space over the years as technology improved to the point of wizardry. The surround sound system and massive tv made for a fully immersive cinema-like experience, all in the comfort of his own home.

He remembered the first time he’d seen a film. Grainy lurching visuals with flickering lights, with an old piano player tinkling tunes out to the silent screen. It had been the most glorious thing Lucas had ever experienced. He’d forgotten what the film was about, but distinctly remembered the feeling of landing on the sidewalk afterward, disoriented at the breadth and depth of the world, as though he’d been thrust rudely back into a reality he wasn’t prepared for. He wanted to stay in that magical state forever, and he tried his best to do so. He came back so many times that eventually the movie theatre gave him a job as an usher. He sat with rapt attention through every showing.

Now, Lucas could recreate that magic in the comfort of his own home, in pyjama pants and sweatshirts. His day had felt tiring in its mundanity, and the evening felt like it was gearing up to be a long one, so Lucas intended to set himself up with his usual zombie movie marathon. He cracked the case on _Dawn of the Dead_ and crouched down to feed the disc into the slot.

“Hey, Lucas?”

Lucas looked up. Abe was on the bottom stair, and when he saw the dvd title screen on the TV, he threw up his hands in the air.

“Oh my god, not again. Tell me you’re not going to sit down here and do another two-day binge.”

“What? I like them.” Lucas was far too old to have to justify himself, but Abe had a tone of voice that provoked the childish reflex to do so.

“Uncle Luke, come on. If you’re not gonna help me upstairs, then go do something.”

Abe looked exhausted, now that Lucas stopped to look and take him in properly. He stood up quickly, feeling guilty for skulking down here without checking in on Abe.

“Do you need help in the shop tonight?”

“No!”

Nope, not tired—Abe was fed up. Again. Lucas flopped onto the couch, because he knew what was coming now. If he’d managed to get into the movie, Abe might have left him alone, but now he was in for the entire lecture, start to finish.

“Luke, get out of this hole for a bit. Out of the shop, out of the apartment. You need it.”

Lucas slouched lower on the couch with a quiet groan.

“Abe, not this again. I’m content doing my thing, okay?”

“Bull.”

Abe shuffled over to the couch and sat heavily next to Lucas. Resigned to the inevitable, Lucas threw down the remote on the cushion next to him.

“You worry too much, you know,” Lucas said. He couldn’t help the sulky tone to his voice.

“I have watched you dig in here for three years. I get being a homebody, but mom’s not here anymore to hang out with. I know you. You need someone to talk with.”

“I’ve got—“

“Someone besides me. I’m not going to be here forever, Luke.”

Lucas gulped down the usual ache in his throat that thought brought on. In so many ways Abe was still the little boy he’d loved and cuddled through childhood, making Lucas as close to a father as he’d probably ever come. Abigail had made that possible. She’d made everything possible.

“Do we have to do this now?” Lucas asked.

“We do. And we’ll keep doing it until some of it finally gets through that thick skull of yours,” Abe said. He frowned at Lucas. “She’s been gone a long time now, Luke.”

“But I still miss her,” he said with a defeated sigh, and then he looked away from Abe.

It had slipped out. Usually he kept it to himself, because she’d been Abe’s mom and Abe didn't need to put up with Lucas’ mopey sadness, but occasionally it hit him hard. Especially when Abe went poking away at raw wounds out of well-intentioned concern.

“Yeah, I know.” Abe gestured towards the TV. “But she wouldn’t have wanted you to disappear down here and stop living because of her.” Lucas said nothing, and finally Abe levered himself off the couch with a grunt. “Fine, do your thing. Have a good night, Lucas.”

Lucas regretted his sullen attitude but decided to leave well enough alone. Abe was the last person left of the only family Lucas had had since immortality forced him to leave his parents and siblings behind almost two centuries ago. Abe deserved better than Lucas giving him a hard time, but… Well, he just didn’t know what else to do.

For fifty years, Abigail had been Lucas’ home base. Devoted and loving, she’d been more than a sister, more than a lover—she’d been a piece of his soul.

For the first few years he’d fully expected her to fall properly in love with someone and replace him, but she never did. Each time she’d welcomed him back with a warm hug and a kiss, soft affection, and Abe would bound up to pile in the embrace of his Uncle Luke—Dad to everyone in the outside world, but Lucas had insisted on Uncle at home, because he never felt he’d quite earned the right to the title—and eventually Lucas came to realize that he was home for Abigail as much as she was home for him.

She said he’d saved her and gave her everything—Abe, a life in America, and his love—but he knew that without her he was nothing, no one.

She made him Bertie, and through that gave his life a purpose and meaning. Now that she was gone, her companionship was gone, as were her stories. The stories were done. He’d read the _Bertie Bruce_ books over and over until he could practically recite them, each one bringing memories of telling Abigail those tales, before they were modified and morphed into Bertie’s story.

To find the last manuscript hidden away in Abigail’s things, the real story, as close to the truth as she would ever come without exposing him, had been a final gift he had never expected.

Abe had asked about the safety and wisdom of publishing it, but they were far enough away from that time that there was no risk. They had to get it published to honour her, but also because the book made his experience real. Some days he couldn’t believe he was more than a figment of the world’s imagination, and that his life with Abigail had been more than a pleasant dream.

Abigail brought Lucas back to life, and without her, he was fading away again. Lucas was pretty sure his story was done too. That was fine, because humanity had countless stories to explore, he didn’t need to create his own.

Lucas switched off the movie, no longer in the mood, but with no idea what to do with himself. He flopped his head back against the sofa cushions, staring at the ceiling.

Loneliness was only bad when you thought about it.

 


	3. Henry Morgan, Then and Now

Henry pushed open the door to his apartment and settled into his established New York routine.  Shoes, jacket, and scarf by the door.  Kettle on for tea, the plastic sack containing dinner from the Jewish deli on the corner next to the paperwork. Books and papers to the table, spread for an evening of tidying and transcribing his notes into his spreadsheets.

The kettle wailed in the kitchen, and through the thin walls came the answering howl of the neighbour’s dog, a little mutt that went off like an air raid siren at any excuse.  He pulled the tacky orange kettle off the hot burner, silencing its whistling, and after a minute the dog fell quiet as well.  Henry wondered if the creature thought he was communicating with another dog, trapped in its own apartment-living hell.

Henry filled the waiting mug, a greenish thing with lumpy stylized flowers all over it.  Though Henry was stuck with the eyesore of someone’s questionable interior design tastes— _retro_ , the real estate agent had called it, while _ugly_ was far more accurate—at least he hadn’t been forced to furnish an entire apartment when he arrived.  He’d already been exhausted enough, and moving into a fully-functional apartment trumped little things like style and taste.

Normally he settled straight into work, but tonight the package from his mother kept catching his eye.  He’d pawed through it eagerly this morning, pulling out biscuits and tea from home, a letter from his mother.

With it all, a book—a _Bertie Bruce_ book, of all things.  He couldn’t believe she’d sent it, as though he were a child in need of a bedtime story. The moment he’d picked it up, he’d closed his eyes and felt the nights listening to his father’s voice reading aloud, the afternoons spent with Nora looking them over when they were old enough to read them on their own.  

No doubt that was exactly his mother’s intent.

Another heavy-handed hint to Henry that his past was not so easily forgotten, no matter how he tried. Henry considered them old wounds best left untouched, while he knew his mother still held hope of healing.

Too little, too late, on all fronts.  Henry knew a lost battle when he saw one.

However, Henry scooped up the paperback from where he’d left it on the kitchen counter next to the PG Tips tea that had come in the package as well. He would barely admit it even to himself, but he was looking forward to reading it.  

While waiting for his tea to steep, Henry ran a finger over the embossed, ornate letters of the author’s name.   _Wahl_.  Unusual name, and he’d never run across it at home, but given that he worked with a Wahl now, perhaps it was more common in the United States.

There were a host of books, published between 1950 and up until Abigail Wahl’s passing in 1995.  They were American-style exaggerated adventure tales of the same character throughout time, each book covering a different time period of his unrealistically long life.  Always in chunks of history, with fashions and culture appropriate to the time.

Henry’s father had faithfully read each one to Henry, and Henry’s dreams had often been occupied by colourful bits of Bertie Bruce’s adventures.  Henry pictured himself in satin waistcoats and brocade riding coats, in leather jackets and jeans, in Zoot suits with pocket watch chains, with music of the decades ringing in the background of each experience.

Bertie was meant to be the Everyman, the puppet through which the reader experienced the world.  When Henry was little, everyone wanted to be Bertie—it was always a fight to see who got to play him in their schoolyard games.

Not Henry, however.  

Henry, as was his way, looked at the bigger picture.  It was always Bertie, in all these books—slightly bumbling, sweet, caring—always the same man from the first book taking place in the late 1700s through to the last book taking place in the 1980s.

Once, when they were both seven, when their entire future was yet to come, Henry lay out in the grass of his front yard with Nora, the two of them gazing up at the rare sight of a perfectly blue English sky.  

“What would you do if you lived forever, Henry?” she’d asked.

“I wouldn’t want to,” he’d said.  

Quick, firm, and decisive.  He was no fool, he knew his heart could never take it.

His family had always gently teased him for his propensity to think far too much, to take too much in with a decidedly un-childlike perceptiveness, but Henry had always seen the world in finer detail than his peers.  The bits and pieces that everyone else ignored shone for him, points that, when traced, made trails.  Just like stars made constellations if you knew where to look, Henry could see the bigger pictures painted by these small scraps.  Sometimes, they were stories beyond his experiences, but rarely beyond his understanding.

And so, rather than picturing the adventures, Henry had lain awake at night wondering what it would be like to live as long as Bertie had.  How would the world look to a man born to a time of tall ships and horse-drawn carriages, evolving and changing with each decade?  Wars, famine, more births and deaths than could be counted?

“Why not?” she asked him.

“You would get old and die, and I’d miss you,” he’d said.  Nora had rolled onto her tummy and propped her hands on her fists, frowning at him crossly for saying such a sad thing, and he’d poked her in the side. “Or would you live forever too?”

“Of course I would,” she’d said.

“Okay, then.  I’d stay with you, and we’d have adventures together.”

He’d loved her even then, his Nora, when they were so young he barely knew what that word meant.  They’d been inseparable from primary school onward, until he’d changed, and she hadn’t—

Henry shook his head, trying to stop the unpleasant memories that would follow.  Even six years after their parting, putting Nora from his mind was impossible.  The merest thought of her set his heart thrumming, made his palms damp and sweaty.

Didn’t matter how far he ran, she was never far from his thoughts.

 

***

 

**Belbroughton, 2007**

Henry knocked on the great oak door, shifting on the porch, suitcase in hand, still wearing his school uniform.  The moment school had broken for Christmas holiday, Henry had been in the car to make the drive from Harrow back home, making the trip in record time by skirting the upper edge of forgivable speeding. He was grateful to finally be old enough to drive himself, and for the car his parents had provided, rather than relying on his father’s travel schedule to and from their village home in Belbroughton into London for business to catch a ride and make the trip. 

As soon as he’d hit the village he’d gone straight past home—and he knew his mother would have been watching out the window and seen him go past—and to Nora’s.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.  Sure enough, a text from Mum.  He hated the damned cell phone.  She was the only one who had the number as she’d bought it for him, and he only kept it as a courtesy to her. Otherwise, it would have met a watery end in Park Lake on the school golf course.

He hadn’t seen Nora in months, and though they’d talked as often as they could, though Nora had flattered his love of pen and paper with letters back and forth, the absence while he was at school was long and he was nervous.  Even with the car, weekends had been filled with extra-curricular activities and studies, and he hadn’t had the time to come home.

In those few months, so much had changed.  

No, no— _nothing_ had changed. He’d work hard to make sure that was so.

He was about to knock again when the door flung open.  Nora, her light brown eyes wide and brimming with surprise, gaped at him.

“Henry?  It’s you—you’re here!”

“I’m here.  Classes ended, and—”

“Classes ended three hours ago!” She broke into disbelieving laughter as she looked him over, at his school uniform and suitcase.  “Henry, you idiot, how fast did you drive?”

He dropped the suitcase as she flung herself into his arms. He pressed his face to her wavy black hair.  He’d missed her like a drowning person misses air, or an adult misses the safety and bliss of naive childhood. Nothing had changed in how much he loved her.  

Oh, let it be enough, _please_ let it be enough….

Nora’s father and mother heard the ruckus and came to the door behind her, Nora’s father grinning and patting Henry on the back, asking him how the school was, if his alma mater was treating Henry well—both Mr. Ewing and Henry’s father had gone to Harrow in their youth, and had regaled Henry with many tales before Henry had left to start sixth form in the fall.  Henry laughed and nodded, saying yes.  Nora’s mother hugged him tight, immediately trying to thrust tea and biscuits upon him, but Nora was clinging to his hand and he to hers, unwilling to let each other go, and eventually her parents shooed them onward to have their time together to reconnect.

“Door open, please, Nora,” came her mother’s voice from below as they scampered up the stairs towards Nora’s room.

“Yes, Mum,” Nora responded automatically, the sound of her eye-roll apparent in the tone of her voice.

He’d missed her so, her lively energy, her enthusiasm, her good humour.  He squeezed her hand and she looked back at him trailing behind her, with such a beautiful smile that his heart skipped as lightly as his feet up the wooden staircase.

Once through the doors of her room, she turned to him and slipped into his arms.  He held her tight as though it had been years.  What a relief to be with her again and relax, to feel the safety of her familiar presence.  She’d known him practically since birth, had always been his one constant.  His world might be spun around, but now he was back here where his life still made sense.

“I missed you, Henry,” she sighed into his shoulder, and then she lifted her head, smiling.  She stroked his cheek.  He closed his eyes, soothed by the familiarity of her touch.  “I missed you.”

“Me, too, Nora.  You have no idea how much.”

He choked on the words, and when he opened his eyes, the wrinkle between her eyebrows had marred the smile.

“Henry, is everything alright?”

He knew he should have told her in that instant.  He should have been honest and forthright, placed his faith in her.  Nora had always loved him, always been his other half.  She would accept it.

The long months at Harrow had taught Henry silence, however, and he wasn’t sure he had the spirit to tell her right now.  He was exhausted and glad to be home.  He wanted everything to be the same, to hide in this beautiful moment where his life hadn’t changed.

“Everything is fine,” he said.

He bent his head and kissed her.  Gentle and soft, caring, with all the love he had in his heart.

Please, please, _please_ let it be enough.

 

***

 

**New York, 2014**

A loud thump and muffled angry voices made Henry jump in his seat.  His neighbours to the south, winding up for another domestic dispute—though given it was how they conducted themselves through most of their interactions, going by the sounds travelling through the thin wall—Henry wasn’t sure if it counted as a dispute so much as daily life.

To add to the ambiance, the neighbours above him started their evening routine of what surely had to jack-booted ballet, and Henry dropped his head back onto the armchair headrest with a defeated sigh. He really needed to go and pick up more earplugs from the pharmacy.  New York might well be an exciting place to live, but it was noisier than the inside of a jet engine.

Knowing he wouldn’t have the energy to concentrate on work right now, and that inevitably his mother would call or write and inquire as to how he enjoyed the book, Henry cracked the paperback in his hands to scan the first page.

 

> **_Chapter One_ **
> 
> _I first met Bertie on a hellishly cold April night in Bergen, near the gates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp._
> 
> _He was one of many poor souls struggling to survive there in amongst the horror.  One of the Americans helping with the liberation effort, Bertie had fallen victim to the typhus that was threatening to take those tenacious survivors that were left, as well as those there to help._
> 
> _I found him lying to the side of a cleared path, half-hidden in the wreckage, burning with fever and near death.  I told him not to fear, that I would help him._
> 
> _I couldn’t have known that, in the end, he would help me far more than I ever would him._

  
Henry checked the front of the book, looking again at the dramatically painted cover.  The author was the same, but the style of prose was completely different.  All the other books in the _Bertie Bruce_ series were told from Bertie’s perspective, his voice.  This was the voice of the narrator.  Was she the nurse on the cover, standing with the man that must be Bertie?  Who was the baby?

 _The Life and Times of Bertie Bruce_ books faithfully covered all the decades, but there had always been a notable hole from the 1930s through to the 1950s.  Many had asked why the omission, but so far as Henry knew there had never been an answer from the author.  For whatever reason, she’d held back this story.  Her estate had, according to the back of the book, found the lost tale and decided to publish it in her honour.

There was a hint of mémoire about the format, and Henry wondered why it would be that she’d choose to tell the tale thus.  From the biography he knew that the author had been a nurse most of her life.

Curiosity piqued, Henry turned back to the start of the book and settled in to read.  Henry had always thought Bertie to be a sad soul, his adventures not so much chosen as stumbled into.  He drifted from place to place, never settling, never striding towards anything.  Life happened to Bertie, and sometimes it seemed as though all he did was witness it.

 _Sound familiar?_ came the unbidden thought. His life have taken so many unexpected turns, and he was far from where he’d ever expected to be. He wasn’t running towards anything, just away from it as fast as he could. It was never fast enough.

The book drew him in, pulling him away from his glum reflection, and as he read the chair beneath him morphed into the cozy overstuffed chair of his father’s library, the dingy apartment falling away in favour of the sound and smell of his childhood home, long left behind, sliding him back into that innocent, easier time.

Henry’s frequent late hours bent over his notes at his little formica-topped dining table meant that, chronically underslept as he was, Henry nodded off after only a few pages, head lolling over and book dropping to his lap.  He settled into a restless sleep filled with uneasy, bizarre dreams of a blonde nurse coming to the aid of a feverish American, tending to him with fluids and cold compresses while he begged the nurse that he be left to die alone.

 _“You’re not alone,”_ she whispered in his dreams. _“Don’t worry, you’re not alone.”  
_

 

_***_

 

“This is Dr. Lucas Wahl, Assistant Chief Medical Examiner, presiding over the autopsy of,” Lucas checked the clipboard in his hand before continuing to speak to the recorder suspended over the autopsy slab, “Gordon Estevez, aged 47. Cause of death—“

Lucas continued with the autopsy, narrating the activity as he went for the case notes on what was suspected to be a victim of targeted gang violence. First of two scheduled for the day, and the morgue was understaffed, so he was recording his observations rather than having an assistant to dictate them to. It hadn’t been too crazy, and so Lucas had sent them off. Made for a quiet day, but he didn’t mind those.

From the corner of his eye he caught movement from Henry’s area of the lab. Once again, Henry was rolling his head and massaging the side of his neck, a frown pulling his mouth down, and then a shrug of his shoulders to stretch his back before bending to the microscope.

Henry had been out of sorts all morning, which was possibly the first time Lucas had seen him anything other than professional and efficiently plucking away at cataloguing of samples. Lucas’ morning greeting hadn’t been ignored in the way it was usually ignored—often as not, Henry didn’t spare any attention for the world around him as he worked. This morning Lucas had received a quiet, disapproving grunt in response to his morning greeting rather than complete disinterest.

Lucas ploughed through the autopsy until lunch. After tucking the body away in the fridge, Lucas cleaned himself up and cast a dubious eye over Henry.

“How’s it going over there?”

Henry was caught in the middle of a jaw-cracking yawn, which he quickly muffled in the crook of his elbow as he angled away from Lucas. He shook himself a bit and blinked himself vigorously awake before giving Lucas a sheepish look.

“Pardon me.”

“Exciting night last night?”

Henry gave him a bland smile and a fake laugh as though Lucas had told one of those weak jokes people tell at parties that you’re supposed to laugh at even though they’re not funny. He returned to hunching over his microscope, and that was that.

Not a yes, not a no, not a justification, not a reason—nothing. Same as ever. It was starting to drive Lucas nuts. He didn’t know a damned thing about Henry that wasn’t a part of his official paperwork. He knew Henry’s age, the university he went to, and the country he was from, but nothing else that didn’t have to do with his research project.

It was like a superhero without an origin tale. It didn’t sit right. It kept you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the tragic backstory. Henry kept himself to himself to the point of impossibility, his past completely obscured.

Who even did that? Lucas knew that Violet, the blood analysis tech, had a poodle she was allergic to, even though she’d been told it was hypoallergenic when she got it, and now she loved it too much to give up. He knew that Anders, the new pathologist who ran liver samples over at the lab, had a nine year old kid who’d smashed the front porch screen door with a paving stone he’d pried up from the garden path.

Henry? Nothing. Not even stupid little things.

Lucas was no stranger to secrets, he had enough of his own. He never had trouble keeping them, though. He had a way of sliding into the background, and that was usually when people got chatty around him. Not _with_ him, but in front of him. If he wanted to, if he cared to, he could learn whatever he liked, and he’d gotten used to collecting peoples’ secrets. Whole life stories rolled out in front of him; people would talk and talk until Lucas spoke up, put in his two cents—usually hilarious and well timed one-liners, if he did say so himself—and there was the shocked remembrance that he was there, that he didn’t quite fit in, and they’d turn and saunter away.

Lucas knew to keep his mouth shut when he wanted to learn, and to talk when he wanted to get a reaction, but listening or talking, he couldn’t get anything on Henry. It was almost admirable how tight a lid he could keep on himself, for all that it drove Lucas insane.

There were days he was tempted to poke the kid with a stick over and over again just to see if he could irritate him into talking.

The only thing that ever drew Henry out was their Cause of Death guessing game. He tried to encourage conversation, but got nowhere—if anything, Henry got Lucas talking way more than he meant to. Meanwhile, Henry said nothing of significance. Not to Lucas, not to the other people in the lab.

How the hell did he do it? Didn’t he get bored? Or lonely?

That thought was a little too close to home, but the ringing of Lucas’ phone from his office pulled his attention away, and he eagerly made his way into the office to answer it, grateful for the distraction.

“Yello?”

 _“Hi, Dr. Wahl? It’s Detective Martinez.”_ Lucas frowned, thinking, and into the pause she said, _“You consulted on our crime scene yesterday? Mugging victim in Seward Park?”_

“Oh! Venti Latte!” he said, snapping his fingers as he finally put the voice to the face in his memory.

_“What?”_

“Uh, nothing,” he said, and hastily cleared his throat, striving for a casual and jovial attitude. “What can I do ya for, Detective Martinez?”

He stressed her name, repeating it, determined to finally put it into his memory. If he could remember the cast line-ups of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1922 through to 1927, back when he was an avid attendee and looked forward to each year’s production, he could remember the name of the detective he saw every week.

_“We had to shut down one of the piers for a crime scene on the river, and it’s messing up water traffic so the port authority is hassling us to get it open again asap. Any chance you can make it down here right away to take a look?”_

“Yeah, can do.” He switched to a brisk and professional mien to match Venti— _Martinez’s_ tone. Bring on Lucas ‘Here to Save the Day’ Wahl, Medical Examiner Extraordinaire. “Where is it?”

He scribbled the address she gave him on a scrap of paper, and only as he hung up did he remember that his crime scene unit was on loan to the 10th precinct for the day thanks to a messy three body crime scene found in an apartment on the upper west side. He was going to have a hell of a time with all the equipment on his own, especially contending with the river. He knew well enough from personal experience that it was going to be cold and windy down there at this time of year. Dammit.

He went into the morgue to see who was around that he could rustle up, but two were out sick, the remaining two had just gone for lunch, and the one guy left—well, he wasn’t exactly an employee, was he?

Henry looked up when he noticed Lucas scanning the room with his arms crossed and probably telegraphing his consternation for all to see. All being Henry, at this point.

“Everything alright?” Henry asked.

Lucas eyed Henry. It wasn’t like he needed any specialized knowledge—Henry had basic lab skills, could take samples, was more precise than most of his lab assistance when recording his data, from what Lucas could see. Given the way he’d eagerly dive for each corpse through the door in order to collect the samples for his thesis, he obviously wasn’t scared of death.

Why not?

“Hey, how would you like to see a dead body out in the wild?”

Henry’s attention sharpened to a fine point as he sat up straighter, his apparent fatigue disappearing.

“Now?”

“Yep.”

Henry’s current slide dangled from between his fingers, nearly forgotten and in danger of tumbling to the bench top. He looked like someone had hit the pause button on a movie right at the moment when the hero realizes he’s been tasked with a heavy mission, and all of humanity’s fate rests on his shoulders. Henry looked at the work on his bench, then back up with a little spark of hope in his eyes.

“Can you do that?”  Henry asked.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Lucas said with a shrug.

He had no idea if he could do that, but the delight apparent in Henry’s demeanour erased any worries he had about it, because this was possibly the first time he’d seen unguarded joy on the guy’s face. Well, there’d been that one time when Lucas had opened up the archives and let Henry go diving through the historical OCME files looking for causes of death and old samples, but that was different. That was academic satisfaction, and this was childlike glee.

“I can be ready in five minutes,” Henry said, already packing up his things.

He was moving far faster than even he usually did, motivated by the promise of a fresh corpse. Lucas knew he’d liked this guy from the minute he first met him.

Henry caught Lucas watching, and Lucas hurried to look busy with his bag before leaving to get his kit. If Henry chuckled softly behind him, he chose not to notice.

 

***

 

Henry was trotting ahead of Lucas by the time they got out of the vehicle, ready to leap into action, his shoes making a sharp _click-clack_ as fancy leather soles slapped against the ancient pockmarked asphalt topping the pier. Lucas had to hurry to keep up with him.

“Hey, hey, this is closed off,” said a uniformed officer to Henry as he tried to lift the tape and go through.

“He’s with me,” Lucas said, flashing his ID to the officer, and they were let past with some reluctance.

Towards the end of the pier, two cars, a squad car and a grey unmarked sedan that was so distinctly undercover police that it might as well have the NYPD crest on the side, were parked slantwise to the water and a cluster of people were near the top of a ladder leading down over the side. Henry stopped next to the ladder and peered over the edge to the water below, and when Lucas caught up with him a few paces later he did the same.

A dinghy was moored to the pier by way of two ropes securing it to a barnacled, tarred piling, and the other to the ladder. It bounced on the choppy waves of the Hudson as the wind blew the water up, but nothing too bad, Lucas noted. He had no desire to take a tumble in this river—the East River was more than enough frigid water for him. A corpse was lying face-up, limbs frozen askew, in the bottom of the shallow dinghy, which was large enough to seat six at most.

They both had to take a step back when over the side, coming up the ladder, a slightly green-faced Detective Martinez appeared. She got her feet on the steady pier and leaned over, hands braced on her thighs just above her knees, and took a few deep breaths before straightening with an unhappy groan. She saw Lucas and gave him a nod.

“Hey, thanks for making it here so fast,” she said. She looked to Henry, who was already back at the ladder and peering down with keen attention. “A new assistant?”

“Nah, intern from a university program. Not really part of my department.” Martinez gave him an odd look, and Lucas realized this made bringing Henry along sound a bit sketchy, so he scrambled for a justification that didn’t make him sound like a negligent manager. He waved his hand airily. “You know how it is.”

She very clearly didn’t, but Lucas didn't offer further explanation, and he hoped she would write it off as another weirdo move and not ask further.

“This is Henry Morgan,” he said, holding out a hand towards Henry to introduce him. “Henry, Detective—uh….” He knew this, he knew this, she’d just said it—

“Martinez,” she said, giving Lucas a wry smile. She tipped her head to her partner. “This is Hanson.”

“A pleasure,” Henry said, not bothering to turn around, still shifting to get a better look into the boat. “Can I go down there?”

“That’s the idea,” Lucas said. “Shoot the scene, collect samples, make an assessment, then bag it and bring it home.”

“Excellent,” Henry said, rubbing his hands together.

“That’s… very enthusiastic of you,” Hanson said.

“Uh, yeah. Be our guest,” Martinez said, and looked a little ill again as she glanced at the heaving water. “Sooner we can get the crime scene squared away, the sooner we can open the pier again.”

“Thank you!” Henry said brightly.

He chucked off his overcoat, and in one smooth motion handed it to Detective Hanson, who was too surprised to do anything other than take it, giving Martinez a startled, wide-eyed look. Henry turned and swung a foot over the ladder and scrambled down.

Both Hanson and Martinez were staring at the ladder.

“Looks like you’ve got an excitable little buddy there,” Hanson said.

“Yeah, thought I’d let him tag along,” Lucas said with exaggerated largesse. “Kid’s been dying to come to a crime scene since he started.”

“Can you do that?” Martinez asked.

“Yes?” Lucas said, though the question mark on the end snuck it’s way into what he’d hoped would be a confident, reassuring answer. “Anyway! I’ll get to it, be done in no time!” He spun away from the detectives and went to the ladder.

Who knew if the OCME had rules about this sort of thing. He probably should know, but he wasn’t going to ask, because as he peered over the edge and down the ladder he could see that Henry was already down in the boat, eager as a kid in a candy store, and crouching to eye sight lines and arrangement of the body. Hell, a warning on his file would be worth it because it was so obvious Henry belonged here.

Lucas raised the digital camera and snapped a few stills from above, then turned to descend the ladder.

He hopped in the boat and it rocked under his feet. The last time he’d been in a boat this size had been that poorly thought out fishing trip with Abe. Abe was thirty-two and Lucas had been desperately trying to keep their connection alive through their changing visual age gap. Neither of them had known a thing about fishing or boats, and they’d ended up tipping and sinking the little aluminum-hulled rowboat in the middle of the lake. They had to swim back to shore, and spent the afternoon drying off on the cabin porch and drinking themselves silly.

There wasn’t much in this boat other than the corpse. A man, aged twenty-five or thirty, dressed in a nice suit and fancy shoes that had been shiny and new before he’d spent time dead in this little floating coffin.

Henry, his evidence kit abandoned in the stern of the boat, was crouched on his hands and knees, face-to-face with the victim.

As soon as Lucas’ feet hit the hull, Henry beckoned him closer and spread his fingers, hovering his hand over the victims face to indicate his eyes.

“Look at this,” Henry sad. “Look at the signs of cardiovascular expansion in the blood vessels.”

Lucas leaned closer and dropped to his knees opposite Henry to take a good look. Seeing the telltale red splotches, he nodded.

“Yep, I see it.”

Henry was about to reach to pull up the corpse’s eyelids to get a better look, but Lucas caught him by the wrist.

“Gloves,” he said. “And before poking and prodding, pictures.”

Henry took the pair of blue gloves that Lucas pulled from his kit, his expression somewhere between embarrassment and the irritated reluctance of a child set to defy the rules they’d been given purely for the sake of defiance itself rather than any reason. As Henry snapped on the gloves, he sighed and glanced back up at Lucas.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be more cautious.”

“No worries. You spend enough time in court defending your methodology to cranky DA’s and you learn to do things by the book when it comes to crime scenes.”

Henry smiled and tipped his head to acknowledge Lucas’ advice—and wow, it felt stupidly good to be able to teach Henry something, when Henry carried himself with an air that he’d already seen, done, and learned everything that life had to offer. He was convincing, too.

Lucas snapped the relevant pictures and showed Henry how to gather the necessary samples. In only a few minutes longer than it would have taken his CSU team, he had the scene catalogued to his satisfaction.

“Ok, go at it,” Lucas said, and with a pleased gleam in his eye, Henry fell back to his hands and knees near the corpse’s head and carefully pulled back the eyelid of one staring, sightless blue eye. Lucas leaned in with him, both of their heads nearly touching.

“Yeah, that’s definitely—“

“—Subconjunctival haemorrhage,” Henry finished.

“Signs of—“

“—Poisoning, I agree.”

Lucas looked up at him, huffing a little. The opportunities to know more than Henry were indeed few and far between.

“Are you going to finish—“

“—All your sentences? Quite probably.”

Henry looked up with a grin, teasing and good-natured, putting them briefly nose-to-nose over the corpse. Henry’s enthusiasm and perceptive intuition and intelligence were really…nice.

And he was staring again, because Henry’s face was also pretty nice.

 _Get a grip, Wahl_ , Lucas said to himself. _No creeping out the assistants_.

He stood up and picked up the bag at his feet. Henry’s entertained, lopsided smile, carefully but unsuccessfully hidden by his lowered head, meant that like many things, Henry hadn’t missed Lucas’ wandering thoughts.

Henry knew he was cute, which should have been annoying, but wasn’t. When you get to the stage of finding someone’s least redeeming character traits adorable—yeah, definitely a crush. Ah, well; it was harmless if Lucas kept it to himself. Several centuries had taught him a fair bit on the topic of unrequited affection, and so Lucas could roll his eyes and have a small chuckle at Henry’s pleased peacock routine without drowning in his own embarrassment.

“Come on, let’s go fill in the boys in blue,” Lucas said.

“I’m sure Detective Martinez wouldn’t appreciate that turn of phrase,” Henry said as he followed Lucas up the ladder.

“Point taken.”

Hanson and Martinez greeted them at the top when they were back on the pier. Hanson had his hands deep in his pockets and was hiding in the turned-up collar of his jacket, while Martinez had her hands tucked under her arms and still looked a bit green.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“No sign of a struggle in the boat,” Henry started, before Lucas even had a chance to open his mouth. “Judging by the positioning of the body, I’d say poisoned elsewhere, then dumped in the boat shortly after time of death.”

Martinez had her mouth hanging open, and she opened and closed it silently a few times before blinking at Lucas.

“Is that your opinion as well?“

“Yeah, pretty much,” Lucas said. “Good job, Henry.”

“Wow, okay.”  Hanson looked a taken aback. “Glad you…enjoyed yourself?”

“Some of us have to work lifetimes to make sense of this stuff,” Lucas said, slapping Henry on the back.  “And some are naturals.  At least you know you’ve got a job here if the PhD thing doesn’t work out.”

Henry puffed out his chest in smug delight, and reached out to pluck his overcoat from an equally confused Hanson.

“Thank you. I appreciated the opportunity to accompany you, Dr. Wahl. Thank you, and congratulations, Detective Martinez.”

She wrinkled her brow, frowning.

“Uh, thanks, but a cause of death is a long way from finding a perpetrator.”

“Oh, no. I meant on your pregnancy,” Henry said as he pulled on his coat.

She nearly choked, as Hanson squawked a shocked, “What?” and turned to Jo, who was staring at Henry, wide-eyed.

“How the hell did you know that?” she demanded.

“Wait, you _are_ pregnant?” Hanson’s voice rose to a squeaky pitch.

“I was going to tell you," she protested. “I’m just three months now.”

Hanson was already beaming, but Jo had a sour look turned on Henry, who was starting to get the message that he was wrong-footed in this whole thing. Henry took a breath and raised a finger as though ready to launch into some new point, but Lucas clapped his hands on Henry’s shoulders, swivelled him around and started hustling him back towards the road.

“Well, thanks! Pleasure as always, toodle-loo, gotta run, lots of bodies to cut up back at the office!”

Henry let himself be propelled along. Behind them, he heard Hanson swear, and Jo sigh in frustration.

“So what’s Sean think?” Hanson asked.

“You know him, he’s already online shopping for cribs,” she said.

The conversation faded away as Lucas and Henry left the scene. They ducked under the yellow taped barrier.

“That is an impressive lack of filter, dude,” Lucas said. “And I thought _I_ was smooth.”

“Sorry. Habit,” he said with a grimace.

Lucas waited to see if he’d elaborate, but he didn’t.

Even so, it was more than he’d ever gotten out of Henry before.

 

***

 

They decided to walk; it was mild and late in the day, and both of them were close enough to their homes that a trip back to the precinct was unnecessary. Lucas had gone back to bundle the collected evidence and send it back with the detectives to be dropped off and catalogued tomorrow.

Henry walked with him, which was a nice surprise. The bubbly, energetic spring in Henry’s step was unrestrained, and Lucas was even more surprised when, out of the blue, he initiated a conversation.

“What made you become a doctor?” Henry asked.

Other than necessary communication and pleasantries, Henry didn’t really engage other people in conversation. Henry was waiting politely for his response, so he went scrounging for one before deciding on giving him the truth—or a version of it, anyway.

“Well, a friend of mine, she was a nurse her whole life. It was her calling. I might have followed her example, a little, I guess. Not all the way—I’d have made a terrible nurse. Medicine is neat, though, and I dunno, it was something to do after she….” He left the statement open-ended and shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down at his feet as they walked. He didn’t like to think about when Abigail had passed, for however happy and peaceful her life and last years had been.

Henry seemed to pick up on what he meant. He was respectfully silent for a time, giving the moment a chance to settle before he spoke again.

“I haven’t heard many people describe a medical degree as ‘something to do,’” Henry said.

“You work long enough at it, you can get anything done. Just takes time and plugging away at it. Patience is a good thing, sometimes.”

“Never my strong suit,” Henry said with a grimace.

“I think you’ll manage okay. You’re fast on your feet there,” Lucas said.

Henry smiled his thanks, then gestured back towards the crime scene, now many blocks behind them.

“Why did you want to become a medical examiner?” Henry asked.

“Zombies,” Lucas said without hesitation.

“Pull the other one.”

“No, really! Zombies.  I mean, at first I got into the Night of the Living Dead thing, and zombies, man.  So cool.  It turned out that dead bodies didn’t really bother me, which is kind of unusual, even in medical school.  Funny how they can cut people open no problem, but the moment they stop oozing blood as they do it, they are weirded out.  Now I ask you, which is weirder—the gushing blood, or the stillness?  I’d like to argue that mine is not necessarily the creepiest profession.”

“Your point is taken,” Henry said with a conceding nod.  “But the ridiculousness of zombies is practically an offense to the field of medicine.  Never mind the eating brains claptrap, the rising from the dead business is ludicrous, macabre at best.”

“No, forget that part, that’s decoration.  I mean, think about it.  Zombies—humanity is obsessed with them.  They’re everywhere, and it’s not like it’s new.  People return from the dead with regularity in stories throughout time, throughout cultures.”  Lucas threw a hand out wide, gesticulating.  “Jesus Christ was a zombie.”

“I see,” Henry said dryly.  “And how well received is that opinion of yours?”

“Eh, what, are they gonna crucify me?  I’ve done worse than a little casual blasphemy.”

“Oh, really?” Henry’s tone was challenging, inviting him to tell the story that followed such a provocative statement.

“Er, yeah, but—anyway,”  Lucas cleared his throat, shaking off Henry’s amused perusal.  “Yeah, zombies, the dead.  It’s like we’re all waiting for them to wake up and come back to us.  I mean, picture the zombie apocalypse.  People rising from the dead all over the place?  The morgue is going to be a hell of a lot more exciting on that day.”

“The dead stay dead, Lucas.”

“But _do_ they?  What’s to say that one day, one of those guys isn’t gonna leap up and start up again?”

“It’s never happened before,” Henry said.  “Fairly certain it won’t start now.”

“But you don’t _know_ that.  You only assume that because of what you’ve seen.  And no one has seen it all, have they?”

“That is true, but it’s a reasonable assumption.”

“Yeah, but—”  He was working himself up and Henry looked concerned, his responses gentle as though soothing Lucas’ fears like he was comforting a child. Lucas gave a weak laugh. “It’s not like I think we’re going to come in one day to find the stiffs doing _A Chorus Line_ in front of the fridges or anything.”

“Then, what?”

Henry’s question was genuine.  Lucas stopped walking, and two paces later so did Henry.  He turned back to face Lucas.  Lucas wasn’t sure what to say to properly answer him, because how could he explain why he needed life after death to be real, that there had to be more than just him rising again and again with only mythology for company?

“Lucas, are you alright?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said automatically, lying through his teeth.  

He really was the worst liar.  Lucas survived by no one noticing him, and Henry seemed to notice everything.  The world had spent two centuries ignoring Lucas, letting him fall between the cracks.  No one noticed him until Abigail.  She’d taken his life and made it real, helped him share it with other people through her books.  She made Bertie, and Bertie in turn made Lucas.

Now, here was Henry.  He saw, he listened, and he noticed. Worse, he made Lucas want to talk about things that actually mattered.

It was _terrifying_.

Henry closed a hand over his elbow, now truly concerned.

“Lucas, what is it?”

Lucas jerked his elbow free of Henry’s hand and took a step back, trying to get hold of himself.  He’d let the old obsession free again, and in front of someone else.  Abe had seen it a few times over the years, so had Abigail, but it’d been a long while since he’d let his mouth run.

Always the wish that he wouldn’t be alone.  Somewhere, there had to be someone like him.

Or, if not like him, then like—like Jesus Christ.  Someone waking up from the dead again, like Lucas was forced to do. Spring forth from a cave, rise from the grave, whatever it was, Lucas didn’t care. What he wouldn’t give to stop being the only one stuck like this. It was hard to believe in your own sanity when your reality was only the stuff of make believe.

Distract himself and forget. It was always the best plan.

“You know what, I think I got tired,” Lucas said with a shrug. “Exhaustion, it’s like, _blammo_ , it sneaks up on you. Next thing you know you’re rambling about zombies, am I right?”

Henry looked like he was caught between pursuing his concerns or sticking to his rigid manners. Lucas didn’t give him a chance to decide. He wound up for a gentle punch on Henry’s arm, exaggerated and playful.

“Away, thanks for the help back there. Way to save me, you were great. I’m sure you had better things to do with your evening, I didn’t mean to keep you that long.”

Henry let it go, much to Lucas’ relief. He dismissed Lucas’ thanks with an elegant sweep of his hand as they resumed walking.

“Nonsense,” he said. “That was most enjoyable. I’d have been doing notes and going to bed early, otherwise.”

“C’mon, it’s Friday! Early bird singles’ special at the Gilded Cage!” Henry gave him a blank look. “What, no clubbing?”

“Oh. Oh, no. Once in a while. Not often. Once. Well, twice, but that’s it. Nothing regular.” Henry’s unexpectedly inarticulate blundering response came to a flustered halt. Then, like a truck shifting gears, he settled into an easy attitude and a slick smile, and turned the full wattage of it on Lucas. “As the mood strikes, so to speak.”

Lucas wasn’t sure if Henry was trying to distract him, or if he was flirting with him, or if this was some byproduct of the topic of conversation, but the charm Henry could put out when he wanted to was as disconcerting as it was effective. Being targeted by said charm was deadly. Lucas had to remind himself that he was still supposed to be walking when Henry’s smile broke wide, because he seemed to know exactly the effect he had on people with that lick of his lip and the way he looked at people through heavy eyelashes, and how did he even _do_ that? It was inhuman that a person should be so attractive.

Lucas overcompensated his step and scuffed his toe, nearly tripping himself, and Henry grabbed Lucas’ arm to stabilize him.

“Thanks,” Lucas said. Trying to find something to say, he blurted, “Yeah, I know the scene here. Best places, free cover nights, Eighties nights, if that’s your thing. So, like, if the mood strikes, let me know.”

Henry raised an eyebrow. Lucas reviewed what he’d just said, firstly noting the self-importance, secondly noting that he’d just hit on Henry, and thirdly that it was mostly a lie, as his knowledge of Eighties nights was current when every night everywhere was an Eighties night, because it was…well, the Eighties. It was all a little much, even for someone like Lucas, who was used to a good solid two centuries of putting his foot in it. Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

“No—no, god no, it’s not what you think. I mean—I didn’t mean—“

“Thank you for the offer, I’ll keep it in mind. Having a friend to show me around would be most enjoyable.”

Henry said the word “friend” like it was foreign vocabulary. Lucas could relate, he couldn’t remember the last time he went out to do something with someone he’d call a friend. Well, there was Abe. Abigail, of course. Towards the end it had been less clubs and more quiet dinners and nights at home. Soon it would be the same for Abe.

Probably not the time to think about that.

There was a beat of awkward silence, and Lucas realized he was across from the shop just as Henry started walking onward again.

“This is my stop,” Lucas said.

“I see. Have a good evening.”

Henry gave him a formal nod and Lucas hurried off across the street, eager to get away.

 _Smooth, really, really smooth,_ he said to himself, along with a few choice curses he’d picked up over the years. Goddamn it, Henry made him act stupid and talk way, way too much. At least Henry found it funny instead of offensive.

The bell of the shop jingled as he pushed through the door. Abe swivelled around from where he was polishing an antique three foot high replica of The Robot from _Lost in Space_. Lucas had loved that show, and he was secretly glad that The Robot hadn’t sold yet.

“What’s with you?” Abe asked. “You look like a tomato.”

Lucas put a hand to his warm face, then groaned.

“Great. That’s perfect.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Nothing,” he said, and Abe put his hands on his hip, the polish rag dangling from one fist. “I took Henry to a crime scene, he walked me home.“

“Henry? What, the PhD kid? He still out there? Go invite him in!”

Abe was grinning now, and Lucas rolled his eyes.

“Give me a break, Abe. Mercy for your poor uncle, it’s been a long day.”

“Okay, old man. There’s fresh pizza upstairs.”

“Homemade?” Lucas’ mouth watered. Abe’s pizza was to die for. Not that he ever had, but he would. The swim would be worth it.

“Of course,” Abe scoffed, flourishing the rag and returning to his work. “Don’t insult me.”

“You’re a god among men,” Lucas said, dropping a kiss on Abe’s head as he strolled past on his way upstairs.

“Eh, go on,” Abe said, swatting him away, good-naturedly.

He’d always been irritated that he’d never grown as tall as Lucas, which was a goal he’d been set on as a child, and Lucas never missed an opportunity to use it to his advantage. That now included kisses on the head and pointing out his bald spot whenever it sunburned in the summertime.

So long as he didn’t get a call from HR tomorrow for illegally bringing the intern to a crime scene and then maybe possibly accidentally sexually harassing him, he’d be able to call it a good day.

It wasn’t even about that, it was… It was that maybe, just maybe, he had a friend. Henry was an odd duck, but birds of a feather, right?

There might not be anyone quite like Lucas out there, but finding people he could relate to was almost as rare a treasure.

 


	4. Deaths and Rebirths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry does not have the greatest coping mechanisms, but they are effective.

Out of nosy curiosity, Henry slowed his step to watch Lucas as he headed towards the shop and went inside.

 _Abe’s Collectibles_ , read the sign above the windows. Lucas had intimated that he was heading home, but perhaps he’d stopped in to another of his favourite shops.

Inside, Lucas conversed with an older man, then kissed him on the head with casual affection and continued on into the back of the shop. Easy, relaxed, comfortable and familiar.

Henry stood on the street much longer than he intended, staring into the warmly lit shop glowing in the fading evening winter light, watching the old man polishing action figures and models. He looked like he was humming to himself as he worked. Finally the cold started to seep through Henry’s coat and he forced himself to walk away.

Of course Lucas would have people he was close to. Friends, family. Why did that surprise him?

More importantly, why did it bother him?

Perhaps because Henry had thought Lucas was like him. Displaced, on his own. Isolated, independent, though Lucas seemed contentedly so—something Henry strove for, but had yet to achieve. Henry admired that in him.

Henry had misunderstood, it would seem. He wasn’t used to being wrong about people, and it bothered him when he was. Lucas hadn’t mentioned anyone. He’d implied he lived alone, Henry was sure of it. Who was the old man, and why would Lucas live in a collectibles store?

What was Lucas’ story, and why didn’t Henry already know? He usually had people pegged in no time. It had been a while since someone had truly surprised him. Not since he’d let Lewis surprise him. Not since he’d opened up to Nora. Not since his father had let him down. He’d become a lot wiser since then.

Henry shook off the past and focused on the current mystery. Lucas was competent at his job, he knew that. When not absorbed in his autopsies, Lucas talked mostly nonsense about fictional characters, kissed old men in collectibles shops, and was hopeless at weathering even casual, harmless flirtation gracefully.

Lucas wasn’t Henry’s usual type, but Lucas’ complimentary view of Henry’s skills and tendency to fall into tongue-tied spasmodic babbling when Henry smiled at him was amusing in its naive sincerity. Henry had never denied the fact that he was easily bought with flattery—perhaps a little too easily. He’d never entirely shaken that desire to please others, for all he’d tried. Being admired was a fine balm to both that urge and his vanity.

However, Henry’s usual style wouldn’t work here. He had a strict policy of no second dates, and you can’t make a fast and strategic exit when it comes to a coworker. A dalliance purely for the sake of his own flattered ego wasn’t a good idea, no matter how effective a distraction it was. He didn’t want to run the risk of mucking up his research opportunity by doing something to sully his work environment.

He wondered why he was even considering it, and why the image of Lucas and the easy affection with the old man lingered in his mind, needling and prodding all the memories from before New York that he was working so hard to forget.

Though Henry knew he should go home and tuck in early after some transcribing, maybe read another chapter of that silly book, he stayed on the subway and passed his stop.

He didn’t want to be alone right now, and old habits died hard.

  
***

**  
Belbroughton, 2007**

  
The holidays were a wonderful relief from the stress and strain of school—or should have been. Henry was grateful for the time to unwind, and tried very hard to enjoy it.

Home was the same as ever. His father was up to his neck in negotiations of some kind, which he apologized for profusely each night when he emerged from his study long past dinner time. He kissed Henry’s mother, then tousled the hair on each of the children as he passed. Even Henry was not exempt, and he spared his father an eye-roll and tried to set his unruly curls back in order. They were difficult enough to manage without the assistance.

In the evenings, Henry’s younger fourteen-year old twin siblings, Elizabeth and William, were usually found squabbling with each other over some game, and Edward was tucked up on the couch poking at his tablet, already a sullen teen at the tender age of twelve. Henry had made half-hearted attempts to cajole him into activities, but Edward had been heartbroken when Henry had gone away to school and hadn’t forgiven him yet. It stung a little, but he left Edward to his sulking, knowing by the end of the holiday he would likely come around.

Henry filled his holiday time with school work. When not surrounded by supplementary biology work for his university credit classes for the undergraduate program at Oxford, he caught up with friends while glued to Nora’s side.

Tonight his parents were headed to a Christmas party for his father’s company, the twins and Edward were being trucked off to various sleepovers, and Henry was to be left to his own devices.

“Do you have plans?” his mother asked as she walked into the kitchen to find Henry with his head in the refrigerator.

“I was planning to make Nora dinner,” Henry said. When his mother raised an eyebrow, he added, “And were thinking of going to James’ house later. He’s hosting a movie night or some such. We haven’t decided.”

His mother knew full well that two teenagers with the house to themselves were more likely to take advantage of the privacy than waste the opportunity on an outing, but Henry would rather spare them both the full discussion, if he could.

His mother crossed the kitchen floor, heels clicking on the linoleum, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Be smart, that’s all I ask.”

“Mum,” Henry protested, and his face went hot, but she smiled and left him to his work, her piece apparently said.

Thank goodness, he wasn’t certain he could withstand a lecture on safe sex on top of everything else. Henry hoped he could manage his nerves and sort himself out by the time Nora came over.

When Nora arrived at seven sharp, after everyone had departed with the speed and grace of a hurricane, Henry greeted her at the door with a quick kiss and a flourish of his hand towards the dining room.

He wasn’t the most experienced or skilled cook, but he’d managed to put together a simple chicken and rice dish. It was neither great success nor failure, but reasonably palatable. He’d also included a carefully chosen wine for dinner as a surprise and set the table with candles and flowers. Nora was gratifyingly speechless when she saw it.

“Henry, it’s beautiful! What’s this for?”

“I missed you,” he said simply. He came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and tucked his chin over her shoulder. She snuggled back against him with a happy sigh.

“Did they have a class in Perfect Boyfriendery at school?” she asked, and turned in his arms. She hooked her arms around his neck.

He smiled, delighted by her pleased glow. She kissed him and it stretched on, but when she shifted her body against his with an interested, promising sigh, he pulled back, easing off the kiss with a series of light, chaste kisses to her lips.

“Dinner will get cold,” he pointed out.

“Sorry.” Her cheeks were pink, and she smiled so beautifully, so happy, that his heart ached.

He _had_ to make this work.

They ate dinner, chatting and still catching up on all the events of their daily lives that letters had not covered. After they tidied up he showed her the coursework he’d been slogging through. Nora’s interests had run towards writing and journalism, and she in turn showed him the article she’d submitted and had accepted to an online magazine. She showed him the website on her phone and they cuddled on the couch, reading it together.

“It’s wonderful,” Henry said. “Congratulations. Not that there was ever a doubt.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning off her phone and putting it on the coffee table.

She resettled herself and they rested against the arm of the sofa, legs stretched out together.

She kissed his cheek, then his neck, lips soft and moving with obvious intent, and Henry’s heart raced into high gear with a frantic patter. He stroked her hair and back, trying to be as calm and caring as he could. He’d known they’d end up here eventually. She lifted her face to kiss him again and he closed his eyes, concentrating on how very, very much he loved her.

It was at least ten minutes of him gently turning aside her hands and refocusing on her, on trying to give her everything he could, before she pushed him up off her. He backed off, braced over her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

She was concerned, and when he mutely shook his head and tried to distract her by dipping down to kiss her breastbone, left exposed by the undone buttons of her shirt, she wiggled back and sat up. This time he sat back on his haunches. She curled her knees up in front of her, eyebrows drawn together.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said, frowning.

“No! I want to,” he blurted.

Too fast, too loud, too desperate sounding, and she only looked more concerned. She’d known him his whole life and could read him like a book, and could tell so easily when he was lying. He bowed his head with a frustrated sigh. Of course she’d know, even if he did his best to fool her.

The few times they’d had sex in the summer before he left for school had been such nervous, fumbling experiences that, while vaguely enjoyable, were so comically bad that they hadn’t told him too much about his preferences. They’d both tried though, giggling their way through, and he’d revelled in the closeness and intimacy, even if it lacked the satisfaction he’d expected.

Time, distance, and an all-boys school where he’d met more than one attractive young man who’d turned his head had all taught him a few things, included the one thing he’d never thought, never noticed, because he’d not been particularly interested in sex very early, and there’d never been anyone in his affections but Nora.

Henry Morgan? Gay. Definitely, quite certainly, very, very gay.

The revelation had been so abrupt it had been like a bullet to the chest, stopping his heart and leaving him struggling to understand how a very small thought, one little conclusion, could run him through and utterly rearrange his life. Between one eye blink and the next, the Henry he knew died and a new Henry was reborn, one with quite a different life ahead of him than the one he’d planned.

For two months he’d lived with this knowledge, knowing that he should tell Nora. Instead of doing so, he devoted the lion’s share of his thoughts to reviewing their relationship, of identifying how very little depended on insignificant things such as physical love. He might be gay, but he could still be everything she needed. What he couldn’t find through innate passion he could work to give her, if that’s what she wanted. There was no need to tell her anything, he could be the same as always for her. He’d returned home determined to march on as normal, as before, as planned.

Facing Nora now, he could see that those plans were on shaky ground.

Nora stroked his cheeks and Henry realized his eyes had filled with tears.

“Henry, you can tell me anything, you know that. What’s wrong?”

He had already decided not to tell her, but her gentle love, the safety he felt with her, made him remember that he could trust her. She’d understand, wouldn’t she?

He took a deep breath and, before he could lose his courage, he said, “I’m gay.”

Henry watched the play of expressions on Nora’s face in reaction to his announcement, none of which told him anything as to her thoughts. He bit his lip and waited.

“You’re gay,” she repeated, her voice quiet enough that it was possibly said to herself.

He leaned forward to kiss her, soft and gentle on the lips. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t respond either. Her brown eyes were large with confusion when he pulled back.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He took her limp hands in his, cold fear running through him as her silence stretched. “I love you, Nora. That hasn’t changed, that will _never_ change. And I want to make you happy—I _can_ make you happy. Whatever you want, I’ll do it for you. I don’t mind, I love you.“

He was speaking quickly, trying to erase the growing look of horror on her face as he spoke, but each word only seemed to make it worse, until she pulled her hands from his and her fingers fumbled at the buttons of her shirt.

“You don’t _mind_. You don’t want—oh my god, Henry…”

She was properly crying now, and Henry made a frantic, helpless noise as he caught her hands again and tried to stop her dressing, stop her pulling away from him.

“Don’t, don’t do that—“

“Stop!” She knocked him away, eyes wide. “Stop it!”

They hadn’t shouted at each other in any genuine way since they were children, when they’d experienced the usual ups and downs of fast friendship. They’d teased each other, and though Nora had a reputation for a swift temper and a sharp tongue, it was never turned on Henry. They’d never really argued deeply, never significantly. It was not a thing they did, and her shout was like a slap to them both.

In the stunned silence between them, she sniffed and fastened the last two buttons. She slid off the couch and he leapt off after her.

“Nora, please, stop.”

“I don’t understand, you kissed me, you were—are—I don’t understand, Henry. Gay means, you know, _gay_.” She stopped and folded her arms, her body closing in on itself and shutting him out. Henry ran his hands through his hair in frustration. All he wanted was to hold her and make it right again.

“Nora, I know what it means, but it doesn’t have to change anything.”

She finally looked at him again, but she looked confused and lost.

“It doesn’t?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

She kept looking at him with incomprehension, and he tentatively reached for her, putting his arms around her, and she let him draw her close. After a minute she relaxed into his embrace.

“I don’t understand,” she mumbled against his chest.

He drew a breath to steady himself. He’d worked all this out carefully. He only needed to explain it to her.

“We’ve been together forever, and I could never love anyone else like I love you. No one could know me the way you do. We’ve talked about our life, about moving in together once we go to university, about getting married, children, all these things. I still want that, and I want it with you. I don’t want to lose you.” She was crying as he spoke, and Henry rocked her, kissed her hair. “Please, nothing has to change. I’ve had time to think about it a lot, and—“

She sniffed and abruptly pulled out of his arms to look at him with red-rimmed eyes, her nose running.

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long have you known?”

He winced, but chose to answer her truthfully. She’d probably know if he was lying anyway.

“A few months.”

“Months,” she repeated, eyes wide. “ _Months_? And you never thought to tell me, not even a hint, even a mention?”

“I wanted to be sure before I told you,” he said, extemporizing wildly. “I wasn’t certain at first.”

“I don’t understand. What happened?”

Henry froze at Nora’s simple question.

For a while he’d hoped that he might be wrong, that his passing fancies were nothing more than that. That hope was obliterated when Lewis Farber, the lab partner who had irritated him through chemistry class all term, had cornered him the afternoon before holiday and stolen a kiss, taking Henry by surprise. Henry had been so staggered by the unprecedented wave of desire that he’d gone limp against the wall. He might have pulled Lewis closer, though he wasn’t sure. Lewis had licked a stripe along Henry’s jaw, then whispered in his ear.

_“Not so high and mighty now, eh, Henry? See? We’re the same, you and I.”_

Lewis had pulled back and Henry had blinked stupidly, gasping for breath and gaping. He’d had nothing to say.

 _“Have a good holiday, Henry,”_ Lewis had said to him as he walked away. _“My regards to your girlfriend.”_

It had taken Henry five minutes to regain control of himself and be able to walk the hall to his room without embarrassing himself.

Henry couldn’t tell Nora about Lewis’ dry lips on his, how that feeling had made his legs shake and his insides turn to liquid, of the wild and unforgivingly vivid dreams he’d woken from, frustrated and aroused and furious that of all people to make him realize this about himself, it should have been Lewis, whom he could barely stand.

Truthfully, Henry had still held out hope. Hoped, prayed, right up until that first kiss in Nora’s bedroom, that he might be wrong. He wasn’t. There was no spark, no desire. It didn’t mean he loved her any less, but it was different, and he knew for certain he’d never feel that with her.

His guilty, stunned silence was enough for Nora to put together the pieces. She covered her mouth with both hands, her tears spilling over.

“Who was it?” she asked from behind her hands.

“Nora, please. It was nothing. It doesn’t matter, I swear—“

“You keep saying that, but it does matter! It matters to me! I don’t know why you can’t see that!”

She backed up and turned away to head for the hall. Henry trailed after her.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

Unthinking, he grabbed her arm and pulled her around, hands tight on her arms.

“I don’t want to lose you, Nora! Please, I’ll do anything! Just tell me what to do!”

She was pale, and it took Henry a moment to place the expression on her face, because he’d never seen it directed towards him before. She was afraid.

He instantly released her and backed off. Nora hurried away from him and grabbed her shoes. She didn’t stop to put them on, just fled out the door and slammed it behind her.

Henry stared at the closed door.

For once in his life, Henry had no idea what to do.

His life up until now had been tidy and orderly, his future clear, his heart fulfilled by the stable base of a loving family, his successful studies, and Nora. Now, he was upside-down, because without her, he didn’t know how to maintain his equilibrium.

He could live without the exciting rush of attraction. It might be compelling, exciting, but he didn’t need it—it couldn’t compare to the love and commitment of the entire life they’d had together so far, and the life they’d dreamed of to come. Making Nora happy was enough to make him happy, and if he could make her see that, she could understand. Maybe it was unconventional, but surely not unheard of? It wasn’t how they’d pictured their life, but nothing was ever exactly to plan, was it? Surely she couldn’t doubt him. Henry had never broken a promise to her, never let her down. He wouldn’t let her down in this either.

As Henry spun through his thoughts he sat at the table, the bottle of unfinished wine in his hand and disappearing fast. Soon his head was dizzy and he felt ill, and he had talked himself into the idea that he should speak with Nora and clear all this up.

He’d handled it poorly, but he knew he could make this right if he could make her listen.

It was a five minute walk to her house and he ran the whole way, stumbling in the dark street and nearly taking a tumble twice. He arrived panting at her door.

He could see the light on in her room on the second floor, and a flicker of a shadow indicated movement within. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Nora?” he called. “Nora, please, I need to speak with you! Nora!”

He stumbled up the front steps and pounded a fist on the door and then called out for her again. If he could talk to her, he could explain. She didn’t understand that this was a mere bump in the road of life, and nothing more.

“Nora!” His voice cracked and his stomach turned, rebelling at all the red wine he’d dumped into it.

The door opened suddenly and Henry staggered forward, his prop lost, and into the stout form in the doorway. It was Nora’s father.

Henry pulled himself together as quickly as he could. He was a fool to have forgotten about her parents. His were out, but of course hers were home. He swiped at his untidy hair and clothes, and hoped his eyes weren’t as puffy as they felt.

“Good evening, Mr. Ewing. May I speak with Nora, please?”

The words weren’t nearly as clear and precise as a sober person’s should be, but he tried for dignity nonetheless.

Mr. Ewing shook his head.

“Go home, Henry.”

“But I need to speak with her,” Henry insisted, unwilling to fail now when he was so close.

Mr. Ewing pursed his lips, glancing behind him and then back to Henry. He stepped through the doorway and shut the door behind him, put an arm around Henry’s shoulders, and directed him around away from the house.

“Come along, lad. I’ll walk you home.”

The firm, fatherly tone and the heavy arm across his shoulders were enough to take the fight out of him, though he did get a small tug and shove when he stopped at the end of the path to turn back and look at Nora’s window. He saw her outline. She was there in the window. She’d been listening and said nothing.

“Let’s go, Henry.”

“I need to speak with her,” Henry mumbled, his head low as Mr. Ewing walked at his side. “She has to listen.”

“That’s Nora’s decision,” her father said. “If she wants to speak with you, she will.”

The rest of the walk was silent until Mr. Ewing took him in the driveway. Henry saw the car and knew his parents were back. He balked, and it took a firm “let’s go,” from Nora’s father before he walked the rest of the way.

His mother came to the door and Mr. Ewing presented him, an arm still around his shoulders to steady him, and his mother gaped openly when she saw him. Henry hung his head and stared at his shoes.

“Henry? What on earth!”

“Go on,” Mr. Ewing said to Henry, pointing him towards the door. “I’ll speak with your mother.”

Henry pushed past her and ran up the stairs to his room. At this point his life was already over, there was no reason fate should spare his pride.

Five minutes later his mother knocked on the bedroom door. Henry was curled up on the corner of his bed against the secure bracing of the room’s corner, knees up and chin resting on them.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Henry shook his head mutely.

She came to sit on the bed gingerly. He couldn’t blame her for her hesitancy, as Henry was not usually one given to dramatics. Generally, he was calm and steady, happy and content. He’d not been like this in front of his mother since—well, he couldn’t remember a time.

Yank a person’s identity out from under them, have the person you trust most reject you, and it was surprising what could happen.

“Give it some time, darling. I’m sure you can work it out.”

“I don’t think so,” Henry said, and put his forehead on his knees, hiding his face.

She shuffled back to lean against the wall next to him, and like a child he tipped over to rest against her side and cry.

Nora didn’t believe that he still loved her. That’s what hurt most of all.

  
***

**  
New York, 2014**

  
Henry’s first stop was in a pub that was painfully American in its pretense to old world style.  The cosy nature of it, with regular patrons sitting at their regular tables, on first name basis with servers, soon drove him onward.

He knew he should have taken it as a sign to go home. This time in his life should be well past, but instead he continued onward, walking down the street towards the brighter lights and promises of distraction.

Contrary to his poorly delivered excuses to Lucas, Henry was no stranger to the club scene. He’d cut a swath across London after Nora, anger and hurt driving him on with an eye towards forgetting. With every random encounter, every man who fell easily for Henry’s hard-edged charm and his increasingly blunt lines—because for whatever reason he’d been gifted with a pretty face and a silver tongue and he knew how to wield both very effectively—was another reminder that he was no longer Nora’s Henry. He was different now; shallow, temporary. Was he like Lewis, manipulative and cold? He’d like to think he was better than that, but with each meaningless encounter he wondered if he was.

His university coursework managed to survive his tear, though it was a close thing in the middle years. By the time Henry finished his Masters degree he’d come to accept his sexuality, but he’d confirmed his belief that his heart was best left out of such affairs. He wouldn’t make the mistake of foolish devotion again. Henry started his PhD program and left the clubs in the past.

Tonight, however, the itch of loneliness was stronger than his common sense, and he resigned himself to some escapism. He ended up in a line, drawn by the frenetic energy of club kids and Saturday night city boys.  

His customary dress was deemed suitable by the club host, who waved him in while giving him an approving once-over—front and back, with a lingering, appreciative look, much to Henry’s amusement.

Clubs were clubs, London or New York, and Henry chose his station on the upper balustrade to better watch the drama of humanity at play unfold below him.

It wasn’t exactly what he was craving—there was no finding that, it was obliterated by time and too many mistakes—but it was familiar enough to ease the ache nonetheless.  The music vibrated through his body with the same rhythm that drove the writhing movement of the crowd below.  The noise took the responsibility of talking away from him, which was for the best.  It finally silenced the smart mouth that was swift to take over the better to safely steer any interactions away from getting too personal.

“You’re far too cute to drink alone.”

The voice was close, the puff of breath sending a shiver down his spine.  Henry leaned a hip against the railing, angling himself towards the tall man who’d leaned into his side to make himself heard.

Senses on autopilot, Henry took in the sudden addition to his evening.  Maybe five years older than Henry, light brown hair.  A casual grey t-shirt over excellently tailored deep blue slacks.  Henry followed the line of his arms down, over well-defined forearm muscles, ropes of strength, and when he extended a hand towards Henry, offering to shake, he noted the heavy callouses in lines across his palm, the barest telltale signs of chalk worn into the thick skin.

He couldn’t resist.

Henry took the offered hand and used it to pull the man forward, leaning towards him and putting his mouth to his ear as he’d done to Henry.

“So what is it, the possibility of death and injury?  The scenery from great heights? The smell of chalk?  The appeal of rock climbing as a pass-time has always eluded me.”

He pulled back from Henry with a jerk of surprise, the pickup-artist-at-work attitude gone in favour of the usual cautious confusion that Henry had grown accustomed to seeing.

However, Henry was also observant enough to see the embarrassment behind it. Henry’s less-than-dazzled response to his line was a swift blow that, rather than disarming him, had shamed him for his attempt.  That had certainly not been Henry’s intent.  

In fact, once Henry’s knee-jerk reaction was excised, he didn’t mind at all. He rather regretted having placed that look upon the man’s face.

By way of explanation and apology, Henry turned the hand in his, cradling it palm-up, and ran a thumb over the callouses.  Henry raised an eyebrow and smiled.

Henry read the words _“that’s amazing”_ on his lips as he laughed and smiled back, the sound drowned out by the club noise.  Henry was far too easy in this respect—flatter his intelligence and his ego would swell accordingly.  Shamefully shallow, but he wasn’t looking for still waters tonight.

“Please, join me,” Henry said loudly enough to be heard.  “I’m Henry.”

“Saul,” came the response.

Henry stroked the palm of Saul’s hand again with his thumb, clarifying the invitation further.  No point playing coy.

Saul’s gaze flickered promisingly over Henry, and then he settled against the balustrade at Henry’s side.

  
***

  
Many hours later, Henry let himself into his apartment, stumbling as the door swung inward.  The clock that greeted him read just after three in the morning.

He was a little numb from one too many drinks, and buzzing with the pleasant sensations of a body well used.  He hummed to himself at the memory of a hand on the back of his head, encouraging him with whispered praise.  

There was much to be said for the regenerative intimacy of skin against skin. Sex was simple and easy. He enjoyed it, for however rarely he indulged himself now.  The hazy eyes of a satisfied partner carried as much reward as his own physical pleasure.

Saul had asked for his number, suggested it could be more than a single event, but Henry had kissed him and bid him a goodnight—with a sincere thank you, of course.  He’d enjoyed himself more than he’d expected to, as Saul was a surprisingly considerate lover.

Saul had been disappointed, but other than a half-hearted “maybe I’ll see you around,” as he walked Henry to the door to say goodbye, he hadn’t protested.

With a glass of water in hand, Henry flopped into the armchair in his sitting room. He shifted and rooted beneath him to pull out whatever hard object he’d landed on.  The book his mother had sent, forgotten when he’d dozed off yesterday evening.

The reminder of home brought back the loneliness again with a bitter vengeance, and Henry wrinkled his nose to fight back the miserable sting of self-pity.  He cursed how poorly he held onto the lighter moments of life when left to himself.

What did he expect?  Temporary relief was only ever that—temporary. So, diversions; work, sex. It would do. It had worked for years, and would continue to work until he found something to make the fixes permanent, even though he still had no idea how.

Henry looked at the book again and set down his water so he could crack it open.  It was late, but he wasn’t ready for sleep yet.

“Looks like it’s you and me tonight, Bertie.”

He felt foolish hiding in such childish things, but he soon slipped into the story as though into a warm bath, and it was good enough for now.

  
***

 

> _**Chapter 2**  
>  _
> 
> _Bertie was assigned to my ward.  In those endless months, there was no such thing as off-duty.  We worked until we could work no more, slept as we could, and rose to do it again._
> 
> _I shared my duties with three other nurses, all of us working against the starvation that had weakened the survivors, and the disease that threatened to rob them of their survival and threatened to take the relief workers as well.  One of the doctors died early in the typhus epidemic._
> 
> _Along with Bertie, among all the other horrors, I found a miracle that night.   A baby, beautiful, healthy and perfect.  Someone—many, maybe—had worked to protect this precious life from the damage of the camps.  A survivor nearby, too numb to communicate, saw the baby and the sight made her blink, murmur “Abraham,” then fall silent again.  She died before we could get her to hospital.  I never knew if she was his mother, or merely familiar with him._
> 
> _Little Abraham was a constant light, ready for kisses and cuddles, sweet and happy with laughter and clapping hands.  I loved him from the moment I first saw him, and what free moments I had I spent with him in my arms._
> 
> _I talked of him often as I tended the poor souls on the ward, and those aware enough to hear me found him a symbol of hope and begged to see him.  We did not want to risk his exposure to disease, however._
> 
> _“Get well,” I would admonish, “so that you may visit the nursery.  We need more people with knowledge of rhymes and songs.  Dr. Collins is appalling.  He keeps singing bawdy pub songs.”_
> 
> _They would laugh, and the promise of seeing innocence and joy again pulled many brave people through the worst.  In later years when Abe was older, I would tell him often that he single-handedly saved dozens in the war, and he would roll his eyes as children are wont to do when their parents dote and tease._
> 
> _But, despite all, one who lingered on death’s doorstep could not find his way back.  I tried to tend to Bertie, but he showed no progress, and grew weaker by the day._
> 
> _As was his way each time I passed his bedside, he would clutch at my arm as I tried to replenish his fluids and give him his medicine._
> 
> _“Please, let me die.  Let me die, let me go,” he would say._
> 
> _He was not lucid, nor was he the first to beg for death, but the regularity of it, the pitiful desperation, made me all the more determined to save him._
> 
> _The night I came to tend him and he did not reach for me, when he said nothing and his laboured, staggering breath was all I heard, I knew I had failed._
> 
> _“Oh, Bertie, I’m sorry, darling,” I whispered, and stroked his forehead._
> 
> _It was a failure I couldn’t take, and I’m ashamed to say I sat by his bedside and wept for some time.  The reality of all I had seen hit me at once.  I wept for Bertie, for myself, for the survivors, for Europe, for the whole world._
> 
> _I felt I owed Bertie a witness to his passing. A man alone in a foreign country deserved a friend at a time such as this. I stayed in the silent ward after my tears subsided, waiting with him, until some minutes later his breathing stopped.  I put a hand to his chest and felt his weak, struggling heart give up its fight._
> 
> _Then, with the blink of an eye, Bertie disappeared, leaving my hand hanging in mid-air to drop heavily to the bed._
> 
> _I was too stunned to make a sound._
> 
> _“Nurse?  Nurse?”_
> 
> _One of the orderlies. I was being called to my duties, which I had been shirking to stay with Bertie a little longer._
> 
> _I stood and looked down at the rumpled bed.  I put my hand to it again.  Still warm._
> 
> _“Nurse?”_
> 
> _“Coming,” I said._
> 
> _In a state of shock, I returned to my work._
> 
> _Four hours later, as the sun was rising and I was stumbling to my tent for a few hours rest, I saw two military policemen escorting a shivering, half-dressed man between them.  A deserter, no doubt.  There were many, and though it was thought shameful, I couldn’t blame them.  We all wanted to run away._
> 
> _As our paths crossed, I saw who it was._
> 
> _Bertie Bruce. Whole, healthy, with the pink flush of embarrassment over his face._
> 
> _He met my eye, and I have never so quickly seen a man sink into terror.  Bertie shook his head, so swift I thought it might topple from his shoulders._
> 
> _“No! No, lady, sorry—no, it’s not what you think.  I wasn’t—I didn’t—”_
> 
> _His stuttering continued as they dragged him on, until I couldn’t hear him any longer._
> 
> _I was too tired to think.  I only had the resources to find my cot and fall into it.  I was unconscious in seconds, my last thought of the confusing reality I faced. Bertie had lived, died, and now lived again._
> 
> _That poor man; not even the comfort of death to spare him the horror of this place._

 

_***_

  
Henry nodded off again as he read, the book falling from his hands to his lap, and once again falling into a mishmash of dreams—the crime scene blending into the rows of medical beds, Lucas’ embarrassment and denial over his awkward overtures becoming Bertie’s frantic denial.

 _It’s not what you think,_ Lucas said as uniformed men dragged him away. _Henry? Henry! Please, you have to believe me!_

Henry woke with a start, disoriented, when the book thudded to the floor. He stooped to pick it up and his head swayed from the alcohol. His thumb caught the dedication page, and the words stood out. Always the same words at the start of every book.

_To L._

A lot of truth in children’s novels, Lucas had said. Lucas, with an L.

Henry snorted aloud at his foolishness. He was still tipsy and overtired. More than that, he was desperate for something more mentally engaging than collecting research samples for his thesis, and, as witnessed by tonight’s decisions, idiotic in his loneliness. Obsessing and building fantasies about the only person who’d caught his interest in his time here in New York was the height of lunacy.

Time for bed. He hauled himself from the arm chair and stumbled off to bed, already dreading the very long and dull weekend that awaited him before he could return to work on Monday.

Maybe he could find something to keep him busy. Maybe the murder case would provide some interesting distractions, if he could think of a lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To add to the list of side-stories this has made me want to write: the sordid tale of the fall semester at Harrow where Henry and Lewis became Chemistry lab partners and best enemies. (and maybe the semester where he had to go back after the holiday and there was a fair bit of externalizing blame and some hatesex on the way to coming to terms with himself.)


	5. Excerpt from "Bertie at War:  The Lost Years"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 from _Bertie at War: The Lost Years of Bertie Bruce_ , Abigail Wahl's tenth and final book in her _Bertie Bruce_ series.

 

> **_Chapter 3_ **
> 
> _It was four hours before I woke, and I had two hours until my next rotation on the ward._
> 
> _My usual habit was to take my turn in the canteen, visit little Abraham, then continue on to work. Today, however, my first thought was of Bertie. I’d woken with two images in my mind: Bertie taking his last breath, and Bertie as he saw me while being dragged, restrained between the two MPs._
> 
> _I readied myself as quickly as possible and hastened to the MP station, which was a little tin shack that served as an office or jail as necessary. A private stood guard at the door with a rifle slung over his shoulder, looking idle and bored._
> 
> _I had brought my field kit with me, and I hefted it as I neared._
> 
> _“I’m here to see my patient,” I said._
> 
> _The MP looked confused, as well he might. Bertie was no patient of mine any longer, but I wasn’t about to give him up so easily._
> 
> _“Sister, we’ve got a deserter in here. He’s not ill.”_
> 
> _“He’s not a deserter. He’s one of the typhus patients. He wandered off my ward in a delirium and we’ve been trying to locate him. I’m here to take him back to hospital.”_
> 
> _The MP looked around for his lieutenant, but I stepped around him and headed for the door. He tried to block my way, but I continued to plough forward as though he weren’t there, and he moved aside before I ran into him._
> 
> _“Sister, I don’t—“_
> 
> _“Private, I must examine him,” I said sternly, fixing him with a look reserved for naughty children and stubborn patients. “Typhus is extremely communicable, and the longer he’s out of isolation the more chance it has of spreading. The outbreak is barely in control as it is.”_
> 
> _“He didn’t look sick,” the private said, but he was already fumbling for his keys and moving towards the door to unlock it._
> 
> _“That is what makes this stage of recovery so very dangerous. Asymptomatic except for delirium and confusion.”_
> 
> _“We found him naked by the river making a break for it,” the private said as the lock tumbler squeaked and opened._
> 
> _“Well, there you are, then,” I said, as though that proved my completely fabricated point of fact._
> 
> _I pushed past the private once he opened the door and left him outside._
> 
> _Inside, Bertie was sitting on a dirty cot in the corner. They’d found him an ill-fitting uniform, far too short for his gangly arms and legs, and he squinted at the bright light when the door opened. Upon seeing me, he sat straighter._
> 
> _Before he could speak, I rushed into the little room and to his side, threw my bag down on the bed and tore it open to dig for a gauze._
> 
> _“There you are, Bertie. I was so very concerned when you wandered off last night. I told you the delirium would come and go. How are you feeling now?”_
> 
> _As I spoke I uncorked the little vial of ether I had and tipped it to soak a drop or two into the gauze, keeping my action hidden._
> 
> _He was confused, as was to be expected. He shrugged as he looked between me and the outline of the guard in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright daylight beyond._
> 
> _“I feel—“_
> 
> _“Absolutely awful, I’d imagine,” I finished for him. “Let’s have a look at you, and then we’ll get you back somewhere safe.”_
> 
> _I put my body between Bertie and the guard and made a show of examining Bertie’s eyes, and he cautiously allowed me near, his demeanour as skittish and cowed as a beaten dog._
> 
> _“I’m sorry,” I whispered, then held the gauze in the palm of my hand under his nose. “Breathe deep.”_
> 
> _Bertie’s brown eyes looked into mine, and for a moment I wondered if he would trust me._
> 
> _He closed his eyes and sucked in a large breath through his nose._
> 
> _Immediately the ether hit him. Not enough to knock him out, but enough to set him reeling. Bertie sagged away from me, nearly toppling backward into the cot. He blinked slowly, shaking his head._
> 
> _“Oh. Yes. I do feel terrible,” he slurred._
> 
> _“Private!” I snapped, turning to him and jabbing a finger towards Bertie. “Help me get him to hospital immediately!”_
> 
> _Bless the army, for they teach a man to jump if an order is shouted at him. The guard instantly leapt forward to take Bertie’s arm over his shoulder._
> 
> _I took Bertie’s other arm, and between us we manhandled him to the ward and tucked him into a free bed._
> 
> _“Send your lieutenant to me if he has any questions,” I said, and busied myself in my work without further acknowledgement to the MP, making it clear I would say no more to him. After a half a minute of being ignored, he wandered away, leaving Bertie in my hands._
> 
> _I knelt at Bertie’s side. He was still woozy from the dose of ether and looked at me with cloudy eyes. I stroked my hand over his forehead and pushed back his brown hair, which had an untidy habit of flopping across his forehead and into his eyes, as it was a little too long and in need of a trim._
> 
> _“I can explain,” he murmured. “I can—“_
> 
> _“Shh, not now. You don’t have to. Rest, Bertie. I’ll be back to check on you soon. Relax now, you’re safe.”_
> 
> _His eyes filled with tears and he caught my wrist as he had so many nights before. Instead of begging for death, he whispered quietly to me._
> 
> _“Thank you.”_
> 
> _I tucked his hand back onto his chest and patted it._
> 
> _“Sleep, Bertie.”_
> 
> _He closed his eyes and drifted off into sedated sleep._
> 
>  
> 
> _***_
> 
>  
> 
> _In the days that followed, I tended to Bertie through his imagined recovery until, two days later, he was judged fit to return to duty._
> 
> _I visited him on his release. He was to stay with the local division and continue to build the displaced persons refuge that was the temporary home of many survivors from the camps. I wondered if he would flee, but he stayed. I had given him a way back into this life of his, and he had taken it._
> 
> _More often than not, Bertie sought out my company in what free time we had. He would play with Abraham, as fond of the little boy as I was, and would escort me for walks of the sprawling refugee area, which could be dangerous for a woman walking alone._
> 
> _Bertie told me of his fantastical survival, both a gift and a curse—while he could become ill and die, Bertie never aged, and each time he did die, he was reborn in water, exactly the same as before. I had witnessed one such passing._
> 
> _“Normally I skedaddle,” Bertie said one day as we played with Abraham out in the sunshine, taking him to see the wide blue sky. “Immortality isn’t the sort of thing you spread around about yourself, you know? People can be—they can be….”_
> 
> _“They can be people. Cruel as often as kind.”_
> 
> _He nodded, and shifted Abraham to his other side to jog him on his hip._
> 
> _“Cruel more often than not, I think.” He gave me a frank, open look that was unlike Bertie’s usual joking exterior. “I think you’re about the kindest I’ve ever met.”_
> 
> _I feared life had not been fair to Bertie, that human decency should be such a surprise to him, and I said as much._
> 
> _“You broke a lot of rules to save me,” he said._
> 
> _“Rules are forest paths, Bertie, not rail lines. They are meant to guide us through our trials, not trap us on rigid courses of action.” I laughed. “Though perhaps the military wouldn’t see it the same way.”_
> 
> _Bertie laughed with me in agreement. Abraham was in a playful mood and beat his fists against Bertie’s chest, gurgling happily as we talked, and it was a relief to see Bertie smile._
> 
> _“Thank you for saving me. I don’t know how I can repay you, but whatever I can do, I’ll do it.”_
> 
> _I was adamant that he owed me nothing. I merely wanted him to live as full and happy a life as he could. He had already lived so many lifetimes, but fate had granted Bertie so much life, and I wanted him to enjoy it all. What better use for such an unusual gift than to live all those years to their fullest?_
> 
> _As the weeks passed, it soon came to pass that Bertie would offer me a gift that I, in turn, could never repay._
> 
> _The day before our regiments were recalled, Bertie Bruce asked me to marry him._


	6. Abe's Collectibles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucas has a big mouth, and Henry meets Abe.

On Monday morning, Lucas cruised in at his usual 8:56am, having done the habitual swing past the bakery for coffee and a bagel. On impulse he’d grabbed two bagels with extra cream cheese on the side, because he was certain that Henry had never had a proper New York bagel. If Lucas had any decency in him, he couldn’t allow a man to go through life without that experience.

It definitely wasn’t an apology. Or flirting. Or anything else remotely embarrassing or inappropriate. Sometimes a bagel was just a bagel.

As predicted, Henry was already in the morgue, having come in as soon as the early shift started at seven. When he entered, Henry’s head popped up and he straightened immediately.

“Dr. Wahl! Excellent, I wanted to—” he started, and then stopped short when Lucas wiggled the paper bag with the bagels in front of Henry’s face. “What is this?”

“Got a present for you,” Lucas said.

Henry wrinkled his nose and cast a scathing look at Lucas.

“Why do you insist on bringing food into the morgue? It’s horrific.”

“Ah, come on. It’s cleaner in here than in most peoples’ kitchens.”

Henry dropped his pen on the stack of records and snatched the bag from Lucas with an impatient noise.

“You are incorrigible, Lucas. For a person who is such a stickler for crime scene procedure, you certainly play fast and loose with the rules.”

“‘Rules are forest paths, not rail lines,’” Lucas quoted automatically, reminded of Abigail and her ineffable patience whenever Lucas would huff and puff about the inconsistencies of life.

He was pleased with the opportunity to turn her wisdom on someone else for a change—especially Henry, who always played the part of know-it-all.

Henry gave Lucas an odd look, a consternated expression that made him look like he was about to sneeze.

“A friend of mine used to say it,” Lucas explained in answer to Henry’s obvious confusion. “You know—rules are guidelines, not rigid and iron-clad, that sort of thing.”

Henry opened his mouth, then paused, then shut it again without saying anything. He squinted at Lucas.

“A _friend_ of yours?” Henry repeated.

“Yeah,” Lucas said. The longer Henry stared at him, uncomprehending, the more Lucas felt he had to fill the silence and explain. If there was one thing Lucas could do, it was fill silence. “She was one of those people who always manages to do the right thing at the right time, you know? So I figured if she, a nurse, someone who actually has to keep other people alive as a part of her day job, said there was a time for the letter of the law and a time for bending the rules, then I should start to learn the difference. So,” he reached out and flicked the paper sack dangling from Henry’s hand, “bagels in the morgue. It won’t kill you. Trust me.”

“Is this your nurse friend that you mentioned before?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, surprised, searching for the reference, and then remembering their conversation on the way back from the crime scene. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

Henry looked a bit off-kilter, and something about it made Lucas nervous, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“Anyway, what did you want to say?”

“Hm?” Henry blinked, then shook his head as though his mind were coming back from somewhere else.

“You were going to say something when I interrupted you with my kind gift of breakfast,” Lucas said.

Henry clapped his hands together.

“Oh! Oh, yes. The crime scene, I was thinking about the crime scene. Just a moment.”

Henry bent down to rifle through his bag, but as he did Maria, one of the lab technicians, tapped Lucas on the shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt, Dr Wahl. Detective Martinez is on the phone, she was hoping for an update on the John Doe from Friday.”

“Man, everybody wants to talk about this case right now. Ok, thanks.”

Maria nodded and left, and when Henry straightened, Lucas was already backing up to head for his office.

“Sorry, Henry. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Of course,” he said, looking a little disappointed. He set the manila envelope in his hand on the bench top. “When you have time.”

Lucas hurried to his office while Henry returned to his endless slides and samples. It seemed wrong for someone as clever as Henry to be doing something so rote as routine lab work, but that was the nature of the PhD. Lots of grunt work in exchange for the honour of a handful of letters alongside your name. _Dr. Henry Morgan_ would have a nice ring to it once he was done. Some things in life required grinding through, and at least Henry had natural persistence on his side.

 

***

 

Henry put the manila envelope down on the counter as he watched Lucas scurry to his office.

He’d spent the weekend poring over tide charts and currents for the Hudson and East Rivers, as well as the surrounding coastal areas. Based on the location of the boat and when it had been found, he had rather good speculation for where the boat might have been released from. The charts were well marked up with his research, and should be adequate to explain his thinking, if he could pass it on.

It was surprisingly nice to engage himself in the mystery problem-solving of detective work. It wasn’t exactly medicine, or helping people in the direct sense, but the idea that he might help put someone’s memory to rest, that their family might know what happened to him, snuck into his mind and made a happy home there.

More importantly, it had kept him busy—busier than his own work did. The drudgery of it was losing the magical ability to sedate his wandering thoughts, and he was finding himself more and more restless lately. The tides had been the primary thing occupying his thoughts when he came into the lab, and he’d been incredibly excited to share it with Lucas, so he could pass it along to the detectives.

Now, however, he was thrown.

“‘Rules are forest paths, not rail lines,’” he said softly to himself. “Says a _friend_ of his.”

Henry couldn’t figure out why Lucas, someone who delighted in fiction, who at the least provocation would tell you the full backstory of any hero in any book or television program—no matter your indifference, Henry knew first-hand—should hide the fact that he’d read the latest _Bertie Bruce_ book.

Given his usual methodology, he’d have expected Lucas to crow over it. Instead, Lucas had woven his strange tale as though speaking of an old, personal friend. Lucas exaggerated, fantasized, and imagined, but so far as Henry knew, he didn’t outright _lie_.

Just as intriguing was the sentimental air in the retelling of the anecdote. There was no mistaking it, Henry remembered the direct quote from the book.

He remembered it so clearly because it was the exact argument he’d tried to use with Nora.

Henry’s life had yanked him unexpectedly from the tracks, and he’d done his best to take Nora with him on the forest path. It hadn’t worked. She’d rejected him without any attempts, hadn’t tried, hadn’t fought for the two of them. He’d had no choice but to continue on without her, because she’d left him behind, abandoned him as a childhood memory, and labelled any future they had together as impossible. Or so he guessed, as she’d completely blocked all attempts to communicate with her.

Henry sighed in frustration as his thoughts spiralled back to her. They always seemed to, these days.

Through the glass walls of his office, Lucas was nodding as he spoke on the phone, pacing as far as the cord to the receiver would allow, making circles of the desk like a ball on a tether, long arm gesticulating as he spoke.

Henry thought of seeing him through the windows of the shop, of him stopping to talk to the old fellow, and kissing him on the head. He was growing continuously more curious thanks to the random bits and pieces of Lucas’ behaviour that refused to fit with the profile he’d drawn of the man upon meeting him.

He’d wait to speak to Lucas afterwards. That would give him something to look forward to, given that processing and cataloguing necrotic tissue samples wasn’t proving to be a gripping experience.

 

***

 

**Belbroughton, 2007**

Henry had always been close to his parents.  Though his mother was his loving support, the one to kiss him and hold him if he cried, it was always his father in whom he confided, who knew the contents of his thoughts.

For three days he heard nothing from Nora.  The first day he managed to keep absorbed in his tasks to avoid calling her, though his mind was so full of her that he couldn’t remember a single thing that he did.  The second day he caved and called, and her mother answered and said she was unavailable.  The third, he was certain he was going to go mad, and was in the midst of slipping on his shoes when his mother saw him.

“Where are you off to, Henry?”

He was so preoccupied that he did not have a handy lie ready, and at his silence she regarded him with such a deep look of pity that Henry hung his head.  He was quite certain that Nora’s father had told her that Henry was not welcome until such time as Nora contacted him, and Henry’s telling silence made it clear to his mother that she had not done so.

“Henry,” she said quietly.  “Be patient.  These things take time.”

“But what if she never—” he burst out, then bit it off, because tears immediately choked him.

She came down the entranceway hall and crouched in front of him where he was seated on the lowest stair.

“Darling,” she said, and kissed his cheek, wiping away tears. “What’s happened?  This is more than a squabble.  Are you alright?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered miserably.  “She—I never thought—I don’t know, Mum.”

She wiped away another tear and then sighed, standing.

“Your father is in his study if you want to speak with him,” she suggested, and then left him with a final pat on the head.

Henry didn’t want anything but to break down Nora’s door and force her to talk to him, but he knew he shouldn’t.  He kicked off his shoes and left them in the hall.  He stalked up the stairs to his room and lasted all of five minutes pacing circles in the small space before he wandered back down and knocked at his father’s study door.  

“Yes?” came the call.

Henry poked his head in and his father looked up from his desk.  He smiled, then beckoned to Henry.

“Hello, Henry, come in, come in.”

He left the desk and came to Henry, gesturing toward the armchairs by the fire.  Since Henry was thirteen, his father had let him sit with him in the study, frowning over the chess board, permitted him a small sip of cognac as he liked, and they chatted.  Henry suspected that of all the children he had the easiest time relating to Henry.  Perhaps it was merely that he was old enough to talk with in an adult fashion.  Though loving, his father connected better on a higher level with children, and seemed a little lost at childish play, though he had tried for their sake.

“Care for a game?” his father asked, and Henry nodded.

They set up the board for a fresh game, and Henry glanced up in surprise when his father set a generous glass of cognac at his elbow on the side table. He looked up into his father’s kindly face, his love underlaid with concern and empathy.

“Some evenings call for it,” his father said, and then sat opposite Henry. He turned his attention to the board.

Henry's mind was not on the game, and his father beat him quickly—a state of affairs that had not been since he was fourteen and begun to put up a good fight. Now he won as often as he lost, and his father took a sip of his own drink as Henry reset the board, watching Henry over the rim of the glass.

“Are you okay, son?” he asked.

Henry finished placing the last pawns and then took his own glass, swirling it before taking a sip.

“No.”

The bald, honest truth of it. Here in his father’s study, the safest place he knew aside from Nora’s company, the glow of cognac loosening his whisper of self-control, he had no inclination to pretend.

His father put down the glass, his brow creased with genuine concern.

“Henry?” he prompted.

Henry gulped the rest of the glass down, heedless of his father watching, because he was a coward and it was much easier with the loose feeling in his limbs and the warm burn in his stomach to be honest.

“I’m gay,” he said shortly. “I told Nora. She didn’t take it well.”

His father was silent as he took in Henry’s blunt statement.

After a few seconds of silence with no reaction, Henry went white-cold with dread. He had been so absorbed in Nora that he hadn’t given a thought to how his parents might react. Surely his father wouldn’t—

Henry set the glass down and it rattled on the table, and at the heavy noise his father came out of his stillness and leaned forward to meet him, setting a hand on his shoulder. Henry realized he’d swayed with the rush of fear, gone abruptly lightheaded.

“Easy, Henry. I’m taking it in, that’s all. As always, you have a direct way about you,” his father said with a smile.

“Sorry,” Henry said, unspeakably relieved by his father’s response, said in his normal tone of voice. “I hadn’t thought this would be so difficult. I’d hoped….”

He had no way to finish that thought without tearing up again, and so chose to leave it unresolved. His father released his shoulders and sat back in his chair.

“I’m sure it will come into balance eventually, Henry. Give her time. It’s a big change for you both.”

“But that’s just it!” he said, voice rising with his frustration. “It shouldn’t have to be! I love her, that hasn’t changed. Why isn’t that enough? I promised her—I promised her _so much_. Does she think I wouldn’t give her anything she wanted?”

His father frowned at him, seemingly at a loss. He took a deep drink from his glass, then twirled it between his fingers, setting the cognac sparkling with the firelight.

“Henry, you’re both so young. I know you thought it was settled, but sometimes life sends us on unexpected paths. Your life will change many times over as the years pass. Aspirations are fine, but you must also be flexible. Promises can’t always be kept.” His father looked into his glass, frowning. “To others, and sometimes to yourself.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” Henry insisted. “She’s wrong. She should trust me.”

His father said nothing in response to that, and Henry stared into the licking flames of the fire. After a while his father refilled his glass and they stayed there companionably quiet until Henry dozed off in the chair, exhausted once again. His father nudged him eventually and coaxed him off to bed, tucking him in and kissing him on the forehead as he’d done so many years of Henry’s life. Henry was too tired to care that he was still dressed, and fell into a deep sleep.

 

***

 

**New York, 2014**

Henry entered his apartment and threw down his bag, which still had the manila envelope in it. He’d not been able to speak to Lucas again—two bodies had been brought in, both in an advanced state of decomposition, and they’d had to perform two autopsies immediately in order to preserve evidence. Henry had watched with avid interest as Lucas and two other assistant medical examiners had buzzed around the body, taking measurements and samples. It had been frustrating to be on the outside and excluded from this event.

He was growing more and more discontent with being the mere observer in this lab space, gathering the body of data for his PhD project. While it all had a purpose and an end goal, the wading through cold statistical data failed to occupy his attention any more. The meditative aspect was failing to reach him any longer, and the itching discontent to change things kept creeping into his blissful numbness.

Without thinking about it, Henry changed clothes and fixed his hair, shaving carefully and adding a dab of cologne, and was out the door before he even logically thought about where he was headed. He took his bag with him with the vague thought that he’d perhaps find a coffee shop to do some work, but he knew he was only kidding himself.

The reflexive habit to emotional stress that he’d developed in his university years was to hit the clubs and find companionship. There was no harm in it, had never been any harm in it. However, he knew he was using it as a temporary patch for a deeper problem. No amount of one-night stands were going to help him forget the past. He was lonely, and sex wasn’t going to fix it.

The acknowledgement of the problem was enough to sour the idea, and so he ended up walking instead. The fall was putting a bite in the air, and he dug himself deeper into the scarf bundled around his neck, a soft midnight-blue woven cashmere blend that his mother had picked out and stowed secretly in his suitcase before he’d left, along with a note that New York was cold in the winter, and he’d need it. Though Henry had tried to leave most reminders of home behind him, he kept this one. There were no attachments to it other than his mother’s kindness and thoughtfulness, both of which were of great comfort right now.

The sun was setting and Henry’s feet were starting to hurt by the time he reach Sutton, having unintentionally drifted along the route he and Lucas had taken when walking from the crime scene last week. He wandered another block further and saw up ahead the warm glow of lights from _Abe’s Collectibles_.

The door to the shop swung open, and Henry came to a halt as a lanky figure exited. Lucas, bundled up in woollen hat and warm jacket zipped up to his chin, hands stuffed in the pockets as he walked away in the opposite direction from Henry.

Henry paused, lurking awkwardly by a newspaper box on the corner, uncertain whether to call out to Lucas and say hello, or to turn around and go back the way he’d come. Lucas was too far away to catch his attention without running and bellowing after him, which was definitely not a dignified choice.

Movement in the shop windows caught his eye. The old fellow was tidying up, moving stock around. The sign still read as open.

The mysterious old man that Lucas kissed on the head and smiled at with fondness.

Curiosity got the better of him.

Lucas would likely be out for a while. He’d nip into the shop and see what this place was. Couldn’t hurt—in, then out. A reasonable diversion, and then a long walk home. He’d be tired by then, and likely able to sleep.

Henry crossed the road to enter _Abe’s Collectibles_.

 

***

 

Abe wasn’t in the mood for more customers, but Lucas was picking up some groceries, so he decided to keep the store open for another hour or so until he was back. It was a never-ending job keeping the merchandise sorted and organized, so there was always plenty to do.

As he was pawing through a box of ephemera from 1910’s New York, some of Lucas’ old collected posters, hand billets and advertisements from when he was living in the lower east side and working as a milkman, the door to the shop opened. Abe looked up to see a young man, early twenties, drift into the shop with as much subtlety as a show horse strolling into the pony ring.

Abe had his regulars.  Douchey kids with aloof disdain pulled down over their eyes and around their ears like a winter hat, as though the world around them wasn’t worth their time, but instead a necessary, barely tolerable evil.  Easy to needle, fun to mess with, but eager to throw money at bolstering their self-image with the pop-culture paraphernalia of yesteryear.  

He could picture Lucas as one of those guys, once upon a time.  Well, in his own way, doing whatever passed for being a hipster in 1790.  Not successfully, though, Abe would bet.  Uncle Luke always had too much enthusiasm and innocence acid-washed into his soul, even after all these years, to pull off the true curled-lip superiority these kids aimed for.  

This guy, though.  This guy had douchey aloofness down to the core.  If it was cultivated and affected, he’d been working on it so long it was like breathing.  At that point, what was the difference between artifice and self?

Abe leaned his elbows on the edge of the box and eyed his new arrival.  

The kid’s head was tilted up, scanning the store with a faintly removed, amused air.  He wore an expensive wool overcoat over a tidy suit, which should have looked like he was dressed in his dad’s clothes, but it was tailored to perfection and very obviously to his own particular style—there was even an expensive cashmere scarf draped artfully around his neck, and a leather bag messenger bag over one shoulder.

He tucked his hands behind his back as he walked along one of the aisles, standing with a self-possessed control Abe didn’t associate with the insecure youngsters who tended to make up his clientele.  He ran a finger over the box of _Motion Picture Magazine_. It was a complete from September to 1940 through to March 1942, until Uncle Luke had trotted himself off to war. Abe knew Lucas glossed over the harder moments of his life, but he still wasn’t sure if Lucas was more bothered by going to war, or having to give up his magazine subscription.  

From the way the kid’s attention immediately drifted from the magazines with disinterest bordering on distaste, Abe could tell that _Abe’s Collectibles_ wasn’t his thing.  More telling was the pause, head tilt, and look of surprise when he caught sight of the Georgian era mahogany table the boxes were resting on.  He ran his hand along the edge of what had been Mom’s hallway telephone table, painstakingly wrapped and brought with them to the States, and left to Abe after she passed away.

Couldn’t fault the kid's good taste in antiques, at least.  He and Abe had something in common in that—Abe loved picking up pieces of furniture here and there, often hitting the antiques auctions with his mom before she passed away in the ‘90s.  

Lucas had always had a good eye for what would tweak the interest of ensuing generations, and Abe knew a cash cow when he saw it, so his store was _Abe’s Collectibles_. It could have easily been _Abe’s Antiques_ if life had taken a different turn. Now, over his dead body would he be selling off any of Mom’s stuff.  He wasn’t ready to let go of the few treasures he had left of hers.

That part of his heart was a little more tender and sore since the book came out. He’d been missing her all over again, now that they were approaching the twentieth year since she’d passed. The anniversary of her death was always a little bittersweet, even though she’d lived a whole and happy life, right to the end.

A swivel on one heel—fancy dress shoes, shined to perfection—and that sweeping gaze came around towards Abe.  Abe smiled and wiggled his fingers in a greeting, now fully curious who this guy was and what he was doing here.

“Can I help you?” Abe asked.

His customer glanced over his shoulder towards the door, then tucked his hands in his overcoat pockets as he turned back towards Abe with a polite nod of his head.

“No, not really.  I was passing by, thought I’d take a look to see what “collectibles” meant.”  He glanced around again, then cocked his head with a curious air, flashing Abe a very bright, charming smile. “You’re the eponymous Abe, I take it?”

He had a British accent that was so stiff it could cut glass. Abe scratched his head, even more curious at his presence.

“Yep, that’s me, in the flesh. Welcome to my domain.”

“It’s your shop, then?”

“Yeah,” Abe said slowly, frowning. It was an odd question, almost leading.

“Ah,” he said, which said absolutely nothing. He glanced around the shop again, and then pulled a pocket watch out to check the time briefly.

Abe straightened and snapped his fingers. Now he knew why the nagging sense of familiarity. Abe had thought Lucas was exaggerating, as he always tended to do with his dramatic flair for storytelling.  Instead, he’d managed to quite accurately describe this flamboyant little work of art, watch and all.

“Henry, right?”

Henry looked up from his watch to Abe with surprise and a fair dose of caution, eyes wide.  Henry’s attitude hardened just a little, but he smiled nonetheless.

“Well spotted.  I must stand out a little against the New York backdrop.”

“Maybe a bit,”  Abe agreed.  “Could stick you on Park Avenue and you’d fit right in, though.”

Henry paused as though looking for the insult in Abe’s words, and found them easily.  

 _You’re a ridiculous stuffed shirt, kid_.

Henry narrowed his eyes and zeroed in on Abe.  He scanned Abe up and down as though he were sizing him up for sale at auction, and then lifted his chin with a superior, knowing tilt.

“I can’t say that the passing fancies of popular culture are my forte—what leads a man such as yourself to bother to preserve and retail the forgettable ephemera of the last century?”

The question was like a needle scratching off a record.  The two kids over in the corner, two regulars who always pawed through the old magazines that rotated through the store, looked up and over at them. Abe could sense the indignant waves of dislike coming off them.  They might be allowed their disdain, but they had loyalty to this little store—no one else got to show disrespect on their territory.

Abe waved a hand at them to dismiss their attention. They reluctantly they went back to their business, still sneaking glances at Henry now and again. Henry followed his gaze to the two.

“Ever heard that old phrase, ‘those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it?’” Abe said to Henry. “There’s more to history than text books. People, culture, daily life—you look through this stuff, you see the stories that time forgot.” He picked up a little advertisement from the box next to him, offering lessons on reading and writing English for recent immigrants. “There’s a lot that gets erased by the history books. Little things here and there.”

“Ah,” Henry said blandly. He smiled again, this time tinged with sheepish apology.  His smile had a shiny quality, like it was perfectly measured out.  “I have a tendency to speak before thinking. Please forgive my rudeness.”

If Abe weren’t perfectly aware that he was seventy-something and a little too old to reasonably expect such things, he’d’ve sworn that Henry was trying it on with him.  Abe had a feeling that Henry could really break hearts if he put his mind to it.  This guy was a real character.

Oh.   _Oh_.

 _Now_ it made sense.

There wasn’t much that had kept Lucas in the real world these days.  Abigail had; she’d had a way of reaching Lucas and getting him to talk in the present tense, to act like he was actually there in the conversation, not kicked back with popcorn watching life happen. Lucas had a tendency to treat people like characters in his personal comic book.  It was as though he were in the constant act of writing stories _in situ_.

Henry _was_ a character, though.  A little larger than life, a little unreal.  A little cute, which Abe bet really didn’t hurt, because Lucas—well, he’d always been an easy mark for a pretty face. He’d worked himself into being a feature of Lucas’ stories with this flamboyant front of his, therefore bringing real-life adventures into Lucas’ usual head-in-the-clouds obsessions with random stories that he followed. That didn’t happen so often in Lucas’ life.

“Y’know, you just missed Lucas, but he’ll be back shortly.”

“Oh?” Henry said, tone neutral. “I didn’t realize. I was passing by coincidentally.”

The way he said it made it sound like a lie. Abe put a hand to his chin, examining Henry. What was there under this BBC period-piece character that Henry exuded?

For the first time, Henry started to look uncomfortable, and he half-turned back towards the door. Abe held up a hand to stop him.

“Let me make you some tea,” he said, spur of the moment.  “I was going to close up soon anyway.”

“Tea?” Henry repeated, blinking in confusion.

“Tea,” Abe said, circling around towards the two kids in the corner. “Leaves in water, real popular with your type over there in England?” He gently shooed the two customers out with an apology and a promise that he’d be back open as usual tomorrow, and then locked up the door. “So, shall we?”

Henry was standing in the middle of the shop with a tangible sense of confusion hanging over him, as though he’d been expecting to be ejected from the shop himself, and couldn’t decide if he should take the initiative and make a break for it.  Abe gave him no choice.

“Come on,” he said, and walked past Henry to tramp up the stairs.

He was already headed to the kitchen by the time he heard Henry’s careful tread on the stairs.  Henry emerged from the stairwell, head poked up like a high-strung cat surveying the lay of the land before he came the rest of the way up.  His curiosity took over, drawing him into the apartment to nosily snoop about, taking it all in.  It reminded Abe of the way Lucas would paw through old books and movies, eyes lighting up as he found treasures from his lifetime he’d thought were long gone.  

No wonder Lucas liked this kid.

“Contrary to what passes for conventional wisdom in the States, we Britons will deign to drink coffee,” Henry called out from the living room.  “I much prefer it.”

“Can’t mess with the flow, then. Coffee it is.”

Abe left Henry to his exploration and returned to his task, setting the kettle to boil and measuring out coffee grounds with practiced precision into the french press.  He couldn’t say why exactly, but letting Henry have a wander and poke around felt right.  Lucas so rarely made friends, Abe wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by.  Henry had a whiff of decency about him, under all that fusty showboating.

“You live with Lucas?”

Henry was examining one of Lucas’ framed B-movie posters from the fifties.  A castoff from Abe’s childhood bedroom, in fact—the pinholes were still in the corner, and he remembered Uncle Luke coming over and covering his mouth in dismay to see it marred like that before they’d sat down and gossiped for hours over the ridiculous plot, driving Mom to distraction.  

“Yep.  A few years now.”

“Is he your son?”

Abe couldn’t help but snort at the idea of that.

“Nope.”

“Boyfriend, then.”

Henry was strolling the perimeter examining everything, from the little collectible figurines on the tables and shelves to the carpets and the colours of the walls.  There wasn’t a question in his tone, but it was definitely a challenge, pointed and direct, designed to be provocative enough to evoke an answer from Abe.

“No, definitely not,”  Abe returned.  

He’d give Henry that clarity, at least, but he wouldn’t give him the reaction he seemed to be spoiling for.  Instead he ferried the coffee to the kitchen table, then settled in his chair and waited.

Henry eventually came in from the living room with his hands tucked behind his back.  He settled into the chair with the regal attitude of a queen—Buckingham or Christopher Street, either way—and accepted the coffee that Abe nudged his way.  After a sip, he made an impressed face and nodded.  

“Excellent coffee.”  He said it as though bestowing his blessing before taking another sip.

Abe rolled his eyes and Henry smiled into his cup, obviously smug at provoking the annoyed reaction.  Fine, if the kid wanted some conversation, he’d get it.

“So, what are you doing here anyway, Henry?”

“I’m finishing my PhD in pathology.  The Oxford program provided this unique internship opportunity with the OCME that was ideal for collecting the research I needed for my thesis project.”

“I meant the apartment.”

“You invited me,” Henry returned smoothly.

“Because you came into our shop.”

“‘Our,’” Henry repeated with emphasis.  He set his cup down and leaned forward, interlaced his fingers and looked as though he were commencing an interrogation.  “So this is Lucas’ store as well.”

“We’re business partners. Lucas’ dad was a real collector, and he started up the store with me. Luke took over when his dad passed away.”   Abe spouted the same old story as he mirrored Henry’s body language, elbows set on the table.  “What about you?  Family?”

“A few.  In England, of course.  Quite the impressive little family empire, in fine English tradition.”  Henry’s gaze fell to the table.  His flamboyant confidence fell away piece at a time, like a layer of dust blowing away in the breeze, leaving only a dull shine behind the glossy smile. He cleared his throat.  “My father passed last year.”

“My condolences,” Abe said. He shifted back in his chair, not having expected to hit such a sore point with the kid. “My mom’s family was in Oxfordshire. The last time I was over there was when she passed away.”

Henry nodded, then took a sip of his coffee, and Abe gave him a minute to regain his balance before trying another tack. 

“Made any friends since you got here?  Bet you’re the social butterfly.”

Henry blinked as though he didn’t understand the question.  After a pause he shook his head, a self-deprecating smile taking over.

“I only have a year, and a rather large project scope.  I’m a little busy for such things.”

“There’s more to life than the lab, kid.”

“I much prefer the practicality of my research work.  Too many people waste their time on inconsequential things.  Fantasy worlds.”  He tossed a hand in the air with a dismissive flick of his wrist.  “Comic books,” he practically sneered.

“How many times, Henry?  C’mon, man, they’re _graphic novels_ ,” interjected a new voice.

Both Henry and Abe started in surprise to see Lucas standing at the top of the stairs. Neither of them had heard him come in. Henry licked his lips, eyes darting to Abe and then back to Lucas.

“Lucas, good evening.  I didn’t mean to imply that—”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.  Doesn’t even rate.”  Lucas cast his bag to the ground and sat in a chair and threw his feet up on the table—but not before snatching up Abe’s coffee.  “So what’s shakin’, guys? We having a party I didn’t know about?”

“Henry here was just wondering if you’re my boyfriend.”

Lucas choked on the coffee, Henry winced and put his head down as though in physical pain, and Abe grinned widely and leaned back in his chair while folding his hands across his belly.

Oh yes, this was way better than an evening in the store.


	7. Coincidences

Lucas played it as cool as he could, but he had no idea why Henry was in his home. Walking into the scene was a neck-cracking double-take, like when you thought you were watching the Star Wars theatrical release, get yourself all comfortable for a good night of reliving the glory days, and then suddenly _wham_ , Greedo shoots first.

Okay, he wasn’t pissed off like he was when that had happened, but still, his mental point stood. Henry in his home was a jarring experience.

“So…” he said, letting the word trail out, hoping for some volunteered info.

Henry gave a desperate, darting glance between the two of them, and then abruptly his eyes widened as he stabbed his finger in the air and let out an explosive, “Oh!” He sprang up and strode to the top of the stairs, where his coat was hung up. He grabbed his leather bag from the coat hanger.

“What the hell’s going on?” Lucas mouthed silently at Abe.

“He’s your friend,” Abe muttered, shrugging elaborately. “Figures he’d be as weird as you.”

“Did you invite him here?” Lucas whispered back. “What were you—“

He shut up when Henry came back to the table, clutching a folder, and tried to look blandly, politely interested.

“Here,” Henry said, grinning proudly. “I didn’t have the opportunity to give this to you earlier.”

Lucas took the folder and opened it, finding a sheaf of maritime charts within, all marked up with arrows and a series of number—times, and distances. He flipped through them, then looked up at Henry for an explanation. Henry was hovering over him, hands clasped together with breathy eagerness.

“These are the tidal charts for the East River, which was in flood at the time when our victim was killed.”

“Our…victim?” Lucas asked.

“The body in the boat? The crime scene to which I accompanied you?” Henry prompted, looking at Lucas like he was daft.

“Oh! Yeah, right. Wait, what are you—“

Henry impatiently snatched the papers from him and spread them on the table, giving Lucas a withering look that practically screamed _“come on, keep up.”_

“At the time of death, which I believe you pronounced as 8:15pm the night before the body was found, the tide was just turning. At the rate of flow, and accounting for the wind, which was coming from a southeasterly direction, and including the average speed of a small craft, the area where the boat could have come from…” Henry leaned over the table and drew a circle with his finger around a highlighted area on one of the charts. “Right here, in this area.”

He stood back with a victorious lift of his chin, arms folded, and radiating pleased self-satisfaction. Abe and Lucas looked up at him, and then at each other. Abe shrugged again, but this time he looked way too amused by the situation. Lucas scratched his head, and then tipped two fingers off his forehead towards Henry in salute.

“Yeah, that’s—wow, that’s pretty cool. Good sleuthing there. But, um, why did you bring this to me?”

Henry’s head tilted to the side and his brows drew together as he deflated a little. He dropped to his hands to his sides.

“I thought you would want the information for the investigation. Should you know which direction the body came from, you could pursue vessels in that area for the ship of origin, and thereby locate the murderer.”

“It couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“I was in the neighbourhood,” Henry said vaguely, glancing at Abe, who snorted and shook his head.

Lucas didn’t get too invested in the cases he worked on. Hell, half the time he didn’t even find out the answer to whodunnit, he just signed off on his reports and sent them off to the detectives. He made up his own stories for each case, which were always more exciting than the actual causes of death. Old lady dead by heart attack? Scared to death by a mutant sewer rat springing from the toilet. Brain aneurysm? Alien parasite, natch. Poisoned and thrown in a boat? For this one, he’d been thinking casino ship headed for international waters James Bond-esque caper gone wrong.

Henry looked completely taken aback that Lucas wasn’t ready to leap up, find them a boat, and race out onto the river to go check out the mystery area. Lucas felt a wave of guilt sweep over him, as though he’d done something wrong. Which he hadn’t—had he? He was just a medical examiner.

Lucas started to gather up the papers, sweeping them back into the folder, trying to sound enthusiastic as he could to try and knock that soft-eyed look of hurt off Henry’s face.

“You know what, Henry, I’m going to pass this on to Venti—er, Detective Martinez.”

“Detective Martinez,” Abe said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table. “So Venti Latte _does_ have a name!”

“Oh, hush up,” Lucas said, swatting Abe on the back of the head with the reflexiveness of a lifetime.

“Lucas!” Henry snapped, horrified.

Lucas had no idea what his problem was for a moment, and then realized that to Henry’s eyes, he’d just smacked an old man. Well, Abe was an old man, but—no, he wasn’t _really_. Well, no, he really was, but… Oh, _crap._

“Yeah, Lucas, respect your elders, eh?” Abe said.

Abe laced his fingers together, giving Lucas a stern look that barely covered his gleeful amusement as Lucas stuttered, trying to find an adequate response that didn’t involve the fact that Abe was a little snot who’d been irritating his Uncle Luke since the ‘40s.

“Right, sorry,” Lucas said, giving Abe a surreptitious glare, then waved the papers in his hand to draw attention away from his blunder. “ _Anyway_ , I’m going to Detective Martinez when I see her tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be happy to take a look, or whatever. Thanks, Henry.”

Henry nodded, mollified, and straightened up. He looked around the apartment, and then back to Lucas and Abe, assessing the two of them. He nodded politely and took a step backwards.

“Well, I’m sure I’ve taken up enough of your time,” Henry said. “I should be—“

“Sitting yourself down and enjoying a nice home cooked meal,” Abe said, smoothly interrupting Henry. “Skinny kid like you needs to eat. You’re a bone rack just like this one.” He got up from his seat and slapped Lucas on the back—hard enough to rattle his teeth, a little thanks for his earlier cuff on the ear, and started for the kitchen. “Come on, take a load off. I’ve got plenty for one more.”

“Oh, I couldn’t impose further—”

“Hope you like gnocchi!”

Abe was already off rooting in the refrigerator, head in as far as he possibly could get it in an obvious message that he’d hear none of Henry’s excuses. Henry looked at Lucas, more flustered than he’d ever seen the guy.

“Don’t worry about it. Abe loves cooking for people, and he doesn’t get the chance very often. We don’t really have people over much. Anyway, sit, relax. I’ll grab us a beer.”

“Yes, thank you,” Henry said, collecting himself and smiling. “Very kind.”

“It’s all good.”

Henry and Abe hit it off like gangbusters, the two of them chatting away as Abe prepared dinner, and Lucas lurked quietly nearby, drinking his beer and trying not to be nervous about the idea of someone else in their house.

The apartment was his Fortress of Solitude, and it had a limited guest list. In here, Abe knew the score and Lucas could be himself. But, he supposed as he took a sip of his beer, even Superman had let Lois Lane into his Fortress.

Lucas took another swig, bigger this time. No, Henry was definitely _not_ his Lois Lane.

Maybe Batman? Yeah, Henry could be the Batman to his Superman. The mysterious rich playboy, suave and well-dressed, to Lucas’ bumbling daytime reporter. Judging from his enthusiasm for the case, he was well on his way to being a crime fighter by night.

The stiff and proper Henry that manned his little corner of the lab had disappeared. The lighthearted smile and easy laughter as he talked with Abe made Henry look like a completely different person. It was like the spark that he’d seen when Henry was all fired up at the crime scene, all that enthusiasm, had blossomed until Henry was happy and relaxed. He looked like he was honestly enjoying himself.

They sat for dinner, and Lucas contended himself in sitting back to listen as Abe and Henry chatted. Eventually Abe thrust a basket of rolls at Lucas and jiggled it a little until Lucas took it, then gave him a significant look over the rim of his glasses, with a glance sideways to indicate Henry and that Lucas should say something to contribute to the conversation.

“Uh, so,” Lucas said, trying to dredge around for anything to add. “I never got to ask you when we were talking the other day. What made you want to become a doctor?”

Henry, who seemed to have noticed the exchange between them while finishing his last bite of gnocchi, chewed methodically before answering.

“I suppose I was inspired in part by my mother. She’s a general practitioner.”

“Oh, cool. And what does your dad do?”

Abe kicked Lucas under the table and Lucas flinched. Henry’s smile fixed in place. After a moment he put his fork down.

“He was an independent businessman. International shipping.”

Past tense, hence Abe’s trying to head him off. Not so smooth. Hoping to direct away from the blunder, he asked, “What kind of shipping?”

Henry said nothing, sitting stiff and still like someone had pressed the pause button on the DVR. It took two seconds before he smiled tightly and shook his head.

“I was never involved in the family business. I believe my younger brother Edward has taken over now that he’s done school. Preserving my father’s legacy, no doubt.” His tone was sharp, and he returned his attention to his plate once more.

Definitely Batman. Financial empire, tragic past, dead parents—well, one, anyway, but—

Under the table, Abe kicked Lucas again and Lucas started, realizing he’d left the silence hanging.

“Oh, um. I—I understand. My dad died when I was little.” Henry looked up, and Lucas gave him an acknowledging nod. “It’s not always easy.”

Now there was a memory buried under miles of debris. Shadows of that grief lingering around to this day. Lucas could still close his eyes and hear his dad’s voice when he sang, remember being carried on his shoulders as they crossed the large orchards that covered the Pennsylvania farm where he’d grown up, in what would someday become the Philadelphia suburbs. Even now, the sweetness of fermenting apples, or the dry thick smell of straw would remind him of home—a home that was over two hundred years distant, and completely buried under pavement and strip malls.

“And you? You have other family?” Henry asked.

Lucas shook off his memories and shrugged with a lopsided smile.

“No. No, not anymore. I’ve got Abe here.” He reached over to clap Abe on the shoulder. “He’s all I need.”

“Aw, Luke, you sap,” Abe said with a chuckle and patted Lucas on the arm before Lucas withdrew. “Back at ya.”

“Then you are quite lucky,” Henry said with a deferential nod to Abe.

“Well aren’t you a smooth,” Abe said, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. “You could learn a thing or two here, Lucas.”

Henry looked inordinately smug at Abe’s praise, like a younger brother just given accolades from a parent at the expense of his sibling. Lucas rolled his eyes.

“Pssh, he’ll start giving you crap too when you don’t do the dishes on time.”

“I would be pleased to help clean up, after such hospitality,” Henry said, and set his fork and knife on his now empty plate. “If you don’t mind.”

Abe gave Lucas a significant look and then stood to take both plates.

“Sure, kid. Would love the hand.”

“Suck-up!” Lucas called after Henry’s retreating back, and Henry looked back over his shoulder with a wink before continuing on, buttering up Abe with more compliments on his cooking.

It had been a long time since they’d had someone else in the house, but having Henry here, the flow continued on as though he’d been here all along. It was comfortable and easy. He kind of liked it, even. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been quite this content in anyone’s company since Abe. Since Abigail.

The Fortress of Solitude had an addition to the guest list.

Lucas got up and dug out a few more bottles of beer from the fridge and headed into the kitchen to offer them up to Abe and Henry.

 

***

 

Abe handed Henry his discarded jacket and Henry slipped it on, the tiniest bit wobbly from one too many extremely strong beers that Lucas had foisted on them, along with enthusiastic rambling about the ‘nutty undertones’ and lengthy discussions of the rising popularity of microbreweries.  Lucas was a bag of random facts at the best of times, but he was like a quiz show marathon after a few drinks.

Noting his unsteadiness, Henry caught himself and put the extra effort into shoring himself up. It wouldn’t do to bumble his way out of their apartment after already bumbling his way in.

Having accidentally brought along the folder with all his research notes on the boat murder had saved him, making him look like an overeager idiot rather than a stalker—at least as far as Lucas was concerned. Abe had winked at him when Henry had claimed it as his motive, completely unfooled.

As he buttoned his coat he glanced over at Lucas, who looked like someone had unglued him. He was sprawled across the couch, feet wiggling, content.  There was none of his usual tense, fidgety nervousness. It was like seeing a different person entirely.

Lucas hopped up after Abe finished handing Henry his bag and wrapped Abe in a hug.  He released him but kept his arm slung around Abe’s shoulder.

“Hey, thanks for dinner and everything,”  Lucas said to Abe.

Abe put an arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze back.

“Ah, what else have I got to do that’s so important?”

These two of them were the embodiment of home and family, like a wonderful eye of calm in a storm. The warm, open affection suddenly reminded Henry of his father; the strength of his embrace, the comfortable smell of his office, the leather seats where Henry had hidden away from the world’s problems. Lucas smiled down at Abe with a fondness that made Henry long for the times when happiness was as simple as hugs, meals shared, and being in the company of loved ones.

“Hey, thanks for coming over, kid,” Abe said. He grinned at Henry, and then his expression softened.

Henry busied himself with fixing his scarf, perfectly aware that his thoughts had been plastered all over his face. Damned alcohol, making him all soppy and emotional.

“Yes, thank you for having me. I should be getting along, I’ve kept you up late.”

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, then held out a hand to Abe to shake goodbye.

“Oh, c’mere,”  Abe said, and without warning, flung his arms around Henry and pulled him into a hug.

Henry, caught by surprise, stiffened with his arms splayed to the side, but Abe slapped him on the back and only hugged him tighter.  Maybe Abe had partaken a little too much in the drinking tonight too. He didn’t let go, and so Henry let his arms come down and around Abe. For a brief moment his head dipped down, chin tucking over Abe’s shoulder, sinking into the simple affection, but he remembered himself and pulled away.  Abe let him go and gave Henry a pat on the cheek.

“Thanks for coming,”  Abe said.  “You drop in any time.”

“Yes, er.  Yes,”  Henry said, and then smiled, stepping back. “I’ll do that.”

Lucas made to follow, but Abe waved him off.

“I’ll walk him out, you go do… I dunno, whatever it is you do,” Abe said to Lucas. Lucas looked like he would object, but Abe put a hand to Henry’s back and started shoving him towards the stairs. “C’mon, I can lock up behind you.”

“Thank you. Goodnight, Lucas,” Henry said as he was abruptly shepherded to the stairs, and Lucas gamely waved goodbye as he was left behind.

“So, what are you doing next Sunday?” Abe asked once they were out of earshot down the stairs.

The moment Abe pitched his question, Henry saw the game in play. He smiled apologetically, gearing up to reject the coming offer.

“I typically outline my plan for the upcoming week, make certain to allocate—“ he began, but Abe crashed through his excuses.

“Yeah, yeah, right. Supper’s at four on Sundays. We do a roast once a month, and next week’s the rotation.”

Henry’s mouth watered despite his feigned disinterest.

“Really?”

“Yeah, proper Sunday dinner. Bet I could pull out my mom’s Yorkshire pudding recipe and everything, make you feel right at home. That was something Mom said she could never get in America, a decent Yorkshire pudding.”

“Did you grow up in England?”

“Nah, she immigrated to the US right after the war. I was just a baby—war orphan. Found me, then brought me home. Said I crawled into her suitcase and she couldn’t leave me behind.”

Henry chuckled at the story. Abe enchanted him with his warm and welcoming attitude. He had a grandfatherly, loving way about him, but with the mischievous attitude of a teenager lurking beneath, an impish good humour that made Henry feel old and curmudgeonly in comparison.

“What was her name?” Henry asked, as Abe had drifted off into a pleasant reverie of his mother and seemed eager to share.

“Abigail,” Abe said. “Hell of a lady.”

The name rolled past him with a twitch of recognition, but he couldn’t place it immediately and so he put it aside as Abe thumped him heavily on the back and extracted a promise from him to turn up next Sunday in time for supper. Soon Henry was out in the brisk New York night air walking to the subway, the glow of his unexpected evening lingering and putting a spring in his step.

Lucas and Abe’s home was a happy place, filled with the love and companionship and a happiness he remembered and dearly missed. Coming back next weekend would be no trial, if he were honest with himself. He felt fortunate he’d made the snap decision to go into _Abe’s Collectibles_ after all, even if it had only been for the sake of nosiness.

He was mid-step when the connection dropped into place, and it brought him to a halt.

 _Abigail._ War nurse, English, adopted a boy named Abraham—Abe. Came to America after the war.

Was Abigail Wahl Abe’s mother?

In and of itself, while it was interesting, it wasn’t a completely earth-shattering fact. Henry didn’t fawn over celebrity. However, one detail did not add up in the story: Lucas Wahl, of the same last name. Abe had made it clear they weren’t related, that they were friends via Lucas’ father.

 _To L_. Every book was dedicated the same.

 _“A friend of mine,”_ Lucas had said. A nurse friend, a close and personal friend. Henry’s odd dreams of the night before came back to him, of Lucas being dragged away, hysterical in his denial.

Henry shook his head as though he could rattle the thoughts from his head and had a small laugh at his own expense. Likely Lucas’ father had the same given name, or something also beginning with L, and they’d been friends or some such. He was being far too childishly silly, too loose and relaxed after an evening of pleasant company.

However, as soon as Henry was through the door at home, he scooped up the book and flipped through it, idly curious.

He found a description of Bertie; tall, thin, and gangly. Brown eyes, light brown hair, strong profile—which was short-hand for a large nose, Henry knew that well enough from his own experiences in life—a tendency to stutter when nervous, to brag and show off his trivial knowledge. Not that he needed to look; Henry knew these stories backwards and forwards, and the character of Bertie was as familiar as an old sweater.

After his split with Nora, he’d delved back into the safety of childhood, and among many other distractions he’d re-read the series while hiding in his bedroom. At the time, he’d found some solace in the stories—one in particular of Bertie and a tour of the west coast of America during the golden age of poets and wandering young men in search of themselves. It had been filled with veiled references that Henry had plucked out and identified with, seeing his own search for understanding of his sexuality. It was well obscured to anyone not viewing it through such a lens, as was all too common in popular stories, but in Henry’s grief, he found relief in not being alone in this struggle to understand who he was. It gave Henry a little comfort for his lot in life, even if it came from imaginary friends.

It was brief comfort only, because in all the books, poor Bertie never found love. They were adventure stories, not romances, and so why should he? At seventeen, Henry had interpreted that to be the model for his own life to come—it would be an adventure, not a romance. Just as well; he’d tried romance, and Nora had abandoned him for failing to be what she wanted. That part of him was done, well and truly shut off.

Henry’s page-flipping slowed, and without meaning to he was sucked back into the story, reading on towards the end.

 

***

 

 

 

> **_Chapter 4_ **
> 
> _Bertie was such a good friend to me, so caring and tender. He had lived many more years than the thirty-five that showed on his face, but even after all those years, he was still a kind man. Silly, at times. So interested in people, in their stories, in the magic people could bring to life with their hopes and dreams._
> 
> _The war was hard on us all, and it had hidden Bertie deep within himself. I was not surprised that a gentle, decent man would take shelter in his own thoughts to survive the horrors of the camps. He had lived a long time, and no doubt there were other memories to seek refuge from as well._
> 
> _As we got to know each other we had so many talks, and he began to come out of his shell. He had a confident and funny manner, an odd swagger to his bluster, but a cautious worry beneath like he knew no one would quite buy the image of the man he wanted to be. He was sweetly clumsy in his efforts to impress me, to be as perfect as he could. Bless, the harder he tried, the more comically he failed. When Bertie could take a breath, oh he was clever, and soon proved himself to be faithful and dependable as well. I grew more fond of him with every glimpse of the real Bertie Bruce._
> 
> _He asked me about my own dreams, and though it took me time to picture a world beyond the war, eventually I spoke of what I saw for my future. Raising little Abraham away from the devastation, of seeking a new life in America, of putting the past behind me and looking forward. It was an impossible dream, but what are dreams for if not letting us capture the impossible and live it, even just for a moment?_
> 
> _The day before we left, Bertie went to one knee and asked for my hand. I was almost too surprised to answer._
> 
> _“Bertie, you don’t love me,” I said, for in all our talks, Bertie had been nothing but a firm friend, never forward._
> 
> _“Don’t say that. You saved me, you believed me. You mean more to me than anyone in this world, and more than anyone in a very long time. Please, let me give you what you’re dreaming of. You, me, Abraham, we’ll go to the United States. You can do what you want when we’re there, I’ll never stand in your way.”_
> 
> _Bertie was right; as a married woman with an American husband, all my dreams became simple and easy. The sacrifice we made in promising ourselves to each other—well, it was no sacrifice at all. Bertie would be kind to me, there was no doubt._
> 
> _“I do love you, you know,” Bertie said, returning to his feet and still holding my hands. “I value you, I respect you, I enjoy your company, and I trust you. I want you to be happy, and you make me happy. If that’s not love, what is?”_
> 
> _It might be a different kind of love than either of us thought we might find as husband and wife, but I would never once regret saying yes._
> 
> _Bertie did indeed help both me and Abraham live a life that was everything we ever dreamed of. My only regret in all of it was knowing that someday I would grow old and die, and my dear sweet Bertie would go on._
> 
> _I could only hope that he would find someone who could love him as much as Abraham and I did. I have and always will believe that Bertie was meant for great things in this world._

 

***

 

Henry closed the book and set it down on the table next to him. His stomach was knotted with the unpleasant burn of jealous sadness. Bertie had found exactly what he’d lost with Nora, the very thing Henry had tried to offer her, and she’d denied them both.

Bertie married the unnamed narrator. She told of a love based in friendship, mutual respect, and support, and a child raised between them. Promises made and kept, a life built together to help each other find their dreams.

As a child, Henry had pictured that cosy domesticity with Nora, played house with her from a young age. He’d been captivated by the vision of a happy family, one of his own, with children running around. He’d been born a romantic fool, and had loved her always. He couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t involve her, but that future was burnt and torched in one short Christmas holiday.

Bertie had his heart accepted as good enough. Why hadn’t Henry? It wasn’t fair—why should Bertie be so lucky?

 _Because he’s fictional,_ Henry reminded himself as he stared at his glum reflection in the bathroom mirror. _He’s not real, and you are. Real life does not have happy endings, it merely continues on._

Henry turned the bathroom sink faucet on to wash up for the night. The water was icy, and he settled in for the painfully long wait for it to warm up. Behind the wall, the pipes clunked and rattled in protest.

If the first book had not been published in 1950, Henry would have sworn that Abigail Wahl had modelled Bertie off Lucas. Lucas was a near perfect template. Lucas, who gave Abraham loving kisses on the head. Lucas, who had a parental affection for Abe that infused every word between them. Realistically, Abe could be little Abraham from the story—his mother being named Abigail couldn’t be that tidy a coincidence. Lucas, however, could not be Bertie. Timing didn’t allow it. A father, a relative, something like that, maybe.

_Bertie lived a long time. What if…_

Henry idly waved his fingers under the stream of water and jerked them back with a hiss, blowing on his fingers. It was boiling now, having charged through frigid straight to searing hot without a stop in the middle ground of pleasantly warm. If he’d been paying attention he would have heard the belching of trapped steam. He flipped the tap to cold, waited a few seconds, and ran his scalded fingertips under the water. Such was his reward for losing himself in irrational mental wanderings.

That night, Henry’s dreams were relentless. They were filled with odd scenarios of Lucas dressed in army khakis, feverish with typhus, being brought to hospital. Henry dreamed he was a doctor, that among the rubble of war a nurse, a baby in one arm, grabbed him and dragged him to see the soldier lying sweaty and delirious.

 _“Help him, Henry,”_ she said, and she looked at him with such desperate eyes that he couldn’t refuse her.

When he crouched over Lucas, he was too late. His last breath came and went, and Lucas’ body disappeared with a suddenness that sent him stumbling backward, falling onto his haunches.

Henry woke with a start, more confused and tired than when he’d fallen asleep. He sat upright in his bed, groggily rubbing his face.

He really was going insane.

 

***


	8. Belbroughton, 2013

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year the Morgan family fell apart.

**Belbroughton, 2013**

Henry made the drive from Oxford to Belbroughton with his jaw clamped shut so hard the entire way that he had a searing tension headache by the time he cleared the narrow lane hemmed in by hedgerows and crossed the high street to head down into the village towards home.

He pulled onto the gravel front drive, shutting off the engine and staring up at the house. His head was throbbing, his ears still ringing with the sound of the engine in the abrupt silence.

_“Must feel good, eh, Henry? A nice estate and a good Harrow education, built on blood money.”_

He winced at the memory of his own naive defense of his father. He picked up the envelope from the seat beside him that contained financial reports Nathaniel Hawkes had brought to him, obtained through his own family’s connections with Greenpeace, presented with self-righteous arrogance and accusation that Henry was as guilty as the rest of his family.

He’d had no idea. None. His father, always so high on his horse about peace, espousing the evils of war, that he despised all the fighting. Whenever he came back from a business trip from the rebuilding cities in Iraq, he would speak to Henry at length about what he had seen, about how he would never wish war upon a country, how he despised the meddling powers who had contributed to the destruction.

And yet, there was Morgan International Shipping, in the list of arms merchants in the United Kingdom, known to be shipping and selling weaponry—artillery, mines, weapons only meant to kill and destroy.

He was supposed to be home for the summer, supposed to be taking an internship with his mother’s practice in nearby Birmingham. Now, he had no idea what he was going to do. He wasn’t sure he could look at his father, let alone share a house with him for three months before he left again for Oxford in the fall.

The large oak door to the house opened, and in the doorway his father stood. He raised a hand and waved gamely to Henry, and then his hand dropped slowly as Henry didn’t respond. His grey face was pale and drawn, thinner than Henry remembered.

Henry took a deep breath and climbed from the car, making the walk to the house like the death march it felt. His father smiled, and Henry’s chest seized with rage.

“Henry, good to see you,” his father said.

He moved to hug Henry as Henry approached, but Henry slapped the envelope full of documents against his chest, bringing him to a halt. He pushed them at his father until he took them, frowning in confusion.

“What’s this?”

“I was hoping you could explain that to me.”

His father extracted the papers and scanned them, and in a few seconds his face fell. He seemed to curl inward on himself for a moment, before bracing himself and looking up at Henry.

“Henry, it’s complicated, I—“

“It is not complicated!” Henry cried, stepping backward. “It is very, very simple! How _could_ you?”

“I didn’t want this, but there were—”

His father’s words were cut off by a cough that started small and dry, then progressed to a deep rattling, barking cough that staggered him, choking him into silence. Henry stepped back again as his father braced himself on the door frame, trembling and struggling to get his breath back, staring at his suddenly frail form.

“Henry,” his father wheezed, shaking his head. He sucked in a few more shallow breaths. “Henry, life is nowhere near as straight-forward as you would have it be, I fear.”

Frightened and angry, Henry pushed past him in the doorway to go into the house. He would find his mother, and talk to her, because he was sure he couldn’t bear to look at his father any longer.

 

***

 

His anger never faded, his pride too unbending to forgive his father for such brutal, cold business practices as shipping weapons that were only used to destroy innocent lives—the desperate, the vulnerable; children who deserved a good life, not one of terror and death. That, and for the humiliating betrayal of having defended him to a room full of his peers who knew far more about Henry’s own family’s shameful practices than he did.

Henry spent a great deal of the next two months looking into _Médicins Sans Frontières_ as penance for the blood his family had spilled, and realized quickly that he would do most good as a skilled doctor. He’d finish his program in Oxford to the best of his abilities. He’d never wanted to be anything other than a doctor, and now he had a concrete reason to pursue it. He owed the world for what his family had done, and in this way he could try to balance the scales. It was impossible to erase the stain entirely, but he had to try.

The silence between him and his father was painful, and Henry threw himself into work while his father locked himself away in his study. When his mother asked him about their rift and Henry let fly his fierce shame, Henry’s mother urged him to look past it and remember that Robert was his father.

“How can you stand it? You’re a doctor. What he’s done has taken lives!” he said to her one day. They’d met at a restaurant around the corner for a brief lunch, between her scheduled patient appointments and Henry’s assistant work in the clinic laboratory.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. She looked up at him, and her eyes were brimming with tears. “I don’t know, but he is still my husband, and your father. It’s a lifetime together, and I can’t let this ruin what time is left.”

“What do you mean, ‘what time is left?’”

His mother leaned forward and put and elbow on the table, resting her forehead on the heel of her hand. She took a few deep breaths before she sat up again, then reached across the small lunch table to take his hand. He felt his stomach sinking with dread.

“I thought you’d figured it out, love.”

Henry shook his head, pulling his hand from his mother’s soft grip. Her fingers slid away from his wrist, and he folded his arms, hugging them tight to himself.

“What are you saying?”

“Henry, he’s in the advanced stages of lung cancer. Small cell. It had already spread by the time we noticed anything was wrong. He refused treatment, though I’m not sure it would have done any good anyway. He said he didn’t want—“ her voice choked up, and she shook her head, staring at the table a moment before she continued. “He wanted a normal life to the end, not chemo and hospitals.”

He hadn’t noticed. He’d been living in the same home as his father, barely looking at the man, content to be out as long as possible, to work as much as possible, to let the closed door of the study stand between them, and he _hadn’t noticed_. He’d not once knocked, never made an effort to seek out the comfort of the armchair by the fire, never sat for their games of chess. Not once in the two months he’d been home had he so much as asked how his father was, nor give more than a glancing thought to the lingering, barking cough, which he’d assumed to be a particularly nasty bout of bronchitis.

“Do Edward and the twins know?” The three were still away at school, their longer terms scheduled to end this week, and they’d be arriving home soon for the summer.

“No. We’d planned to tell them when they got home.”

Henry pushed himself away from the table, setting the water glasses rattling and causing the neighbouring table of lunch patrons to look over at them with curiosity as he stood upright, grabbing up his bag.

“Henry,” his mother said, reaching for him, but he avoided her.

“I will see you this evening,” he said, and fled the restaurant.

He headed back to work, and at the end of the day they shared the short the commute back home in silence, his mother’s hands gripped tight on the steering wheel as they left Birmingham to head back towards Belbroughton.

 

***

 

Elizabeth and William took the news with tears and denial, and though they understood the gravity of it, they talked between themselves as though there were hope.

Edward, newly turned eighteen and considering himself to be a proper adult, took it silently with a stiff upper lip. He started to dog their father’s heels and spent as much time as he could with him, often tucked up behind the closed study door with him. Henry continued to avoid his father and the poisonous glares his brother shot at him, as though all of this was Henry’s fault.

He tried not to feel jealous that Edward had replaced him in his father’s confidence, reminding himself that it was Henry’s choice, his decision, to eschew him for his crimes.

Family dinners became a daily event rather than the once-weekly affair they’d been in Henry’s childhood, when everyone’s schedules had fluctuated with work, school, and extracurricular activities, and time at home all together was rare. Now, they were all a bonded team, united in the face of adversity.

All except Henry.

Henry did everything he could to avoid them. He felt removed, outside their warmth, and nothing would make him sit at the same table with his father, with the loving support afforded him after all he’d done, with his grey skin, shallow breath, and dull eyes, the oxygen tank now a constant hissing companion at his side.

As was his new custom, Henry put on his shoes and slipped from the house just before dinner time to go find himself something quick while he sat in his car studying for his long-distance courses to get ahead on his coming year at Oxford. Before he made it halfway down the path towards the car, the front door slammed behind him.

Edward was storming towards him, colour high on his cheeks, fists clenched and breath huffing. Puberty had only recently hit him, and he was still reedy and light despite his increasing height, his scrawny arms and legs swamped by the oversized baggy clothes he insisted on wearing, thinking it fashionable.

“What’s the matter?” Henry asked, coming back up the path a few steps, alarmed, thinking something had happened to their father. “What’s wrong?”

“‘What’s wrong?’” Edward mocked, coming to a stop in front of him, fairly quivering. “You’re such a selfish prick, you know that?”

Henry’s mouth dropped, too surprised to be angry, staring down at his younger brother’s snarling face.

“What?”

“Why are you even here?” Edward asked, getting in Henry’s face, furious. “Every night you leave and he sits there like you stabbed him in the back. It’s already miserable, and you’re making it worse!”

Henry took a step back from his brother, frustrated and furious all over again with his father. He wouldn’t discuss it with Edward. Edward had no reason to know, and Henry would do nothing to disillusion him of the noble man he thought their father to be. It would be cruel, and no matter what Henry felt, he’d not do that to his brother.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said shortly. “Go back inside. I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

Henry turned to go, but Edward, with a temper that could flare like an explosion, roared at him and grabbed him by the shirt front. Henry knocked at his hand, dodging back as Edward took a swing.

“Edward! Eddie, stop it!” Henry grunted as he tried to hold him back. “Calm down!”

“You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself!”

He took another swing at Henry, this time connecting, smacking him on the side of the head. They stumbled and went down, falling onto the gravel path. Henry twisted and rolled trying to get his weight on Edward. Henry still had a head and many pounds on his brother, and finally managed to pin him down as Edward cursed at him and tried to buck him off, furious tears on his face.

There was shouting behind him, and then hands yanking Henry off. His mother. As soon as Edward was free he made another lunge at Henry, but his mother grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back.

“Stop it!” she snapped. “Stop it, both of you!”

“He started it!” Henry stabbed a finger at Edward, his ear smarting and temper flaring with childish ire. “What is wrong with you?”

“You! That’s what’s wrong. You, Henry.” Edward sniffed, wiping at his damp face, wrinkling up his nose and trying valiantly to stop crying.

“Edward, stop,” his mother said. “Enough.”

“Just—just fuck off! I don’t care where you go, just don’t come back,” Edward shouted, his voice cracking with adolescence and anguish, and he turned to run back to the house.

“Edward!” his mother called, but the door slammed behind him as he went into the house.

She spun away from Henry and put her hands over her face, drawing a deep breath and letting out a harsh, muffled noise that might have been a scream if she hadn’t had her lips shut tight and her hands pressed over her mouth.

He didn’t know what to do. Eventually reached out to put a hand on her back.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” he said quietly.

She took a deep breath, dropped her hands and looked back to him with a watery smile and reddened eyes.

“I know, Henry.” She reached out for him and brushed dirt from his hair, then straightened his shirt collar beneath his jacket. “I know.”

He pulled back, looking from her to the house, then the cars.

“I think I’m going to go for the night,” he said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know that, but…” He sniffed and wiped at his eyes, determined not to cry in front of her. “I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

He turned and hurried down the path, leaving her behind, climbed into the car and drove away.

He wished desperately he had somewhere to go.

He drove by Nora’s house. It was unchanged in the intervening years, always looking the same in each of his sparse visits home. He continued on, knowing the door was barred to him—he didn’t even know if she was here, or if she were away at school. They’d not spoken since he left for Harrow that New Years five years past, and she’d not answered a single text or hand-written letter, though he’d tried several times, fairly begging her to listen to him, to let him explain. He still hadn’t given up hope, fool that he was.

He made it five minutes down the road before he pulled over into a turnaround by a sheep field and sobbed, shouting wordlessly and beating on the steering wheel of the car until he was exhausted.


	9. Old Acquaintances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guess who?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you pinkelephant5 for the beta!

**New York, 2014**

Henry wanted to burn that idiotic book.

He refused to cater to the odd fantasies it had stirred up, but they dogged him with nagging consistency, both as a lingering throughline in the background of his thoughts and in odd dreams at night. It drove him into a foul mood in the following days.

The last time he’d read the _Bertie Bruce_ books had been during the dark month after Nora left him, before he dragged himself back to Harrow to finish out the miserable year. Presumably reading this latest book had brought up an echo of all the stress and unhappiness of that time—too much drinking, the battleground that sprung up between him and Lewis, the drifting from friends and family—and it was making him erratic and irrational.

Or maybe he was going batty from culture shock, or terminal levels of PhD stress, or possibly guilt over not calling his mother? Maybe it was as simple as three solid months of collecting and processing tissue samples, with another nine months ahead of him, was driving him around the bend.

Every time Lucas walked past his work station, whenever Lucas was absorbed in an autopsy, Henry found himself distracted from his work and watching, wondering what Lucas would look like in various period dresses, how he would have blended into the 1850’s, or 1900’s. What would he have talked like, how would he have behaved?

Henry prided himself on his rationality. As a child he’d been pedantically consistent in his logic, and thus never had cause to mistrust his instincts. They were grounded firmly in observation and evidence. They’d never led him astray before, and so the frustration of finding this stupidly illogical fantasy continually rattling around in his brain was making him furious with himself.

Try as he might, it would not go.

Henry tended to lose track of time when he was working, a bad habit he’d never been able to shake. Distracted as he was, this night he ran straight through to six o’clock without any cessation. His samples were still spread out all over his work station when Lucas came out of his office.

Lucas sat into the swivel chair opposite Henry as had become his custom, and Henry blinked up at him in surprise.

“It’s closing time, dude.”

He looked over at the clock on the wall and grimaced in apology.

“Sorry, Lucas, I lost track of time. Again.”

“No problem. Again.” Lucas sighed and folded his arms, settling in for a wait as Henry started packing up.

“My school teachers were constantly fed up with my poor sense of time,” Henry joked lightly by way of an apology.

“Nah, I’ve seen worse,” Lucas said. “Besides, it’s the ones who spend their time trying to leave early who are the problems, not the ones staying late to work more. You could teach my staff a thing or two. Heck, you could probably teach me.”

“Thank you. My father was always a stickler for hard work. ‘Follow through, Henry. Your word is all you have,’” he intoned, in a mock-deep voice that parodied his father’s.

Henry had intended the statement only as a lighthearted jest, but the reminder of his father’s guidance, once loved and respected, pricked him sharply. When he looked up, Lucas was watching him with concern. Henry looked away, busying himself again with cleaning up.

“Good old Robert Morgan. Quite the man.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Henry. Can’t be easy, this far away from home.”

“Thank you, but it’s fine.” Henry dismissed Lucas’ concern with a wave, pushing aside any thoughts of his family and his past. It was best forgotten, anyway. As was his habit, he automatically turned the question back on Lucas to regain his ground. “You said your father also passed away when you were young?”

“Yeah, he did. Like you said, quite a guy.”

A filmy mist of nostalgia formed over Lucas’ mask of empathy, and Henry took the chance to collect himself as Lucas picked apart his own past rather than Henry’s, his attention shifted inward. He felt a twinge of envy to think that Lucas might be sincere, that he could look back on his own father as a man he respected as well as missed. Henry still didn’t know how to separate the loving man from the deeds he’d done. Was Lucas’ dad a hero in his eyes, or…

The thought came to an abrupt halt like a charging dog reaching the end of its tether. His nagging, nosy curiosity shot through to the foreground of his attentions.

“Sorry, what was his name?” he said, before he could check the impulse. Not that he needed the confirmation, as he’d already deduced the only possible answer to be—

“My dad? Albert.”

Henry stopped short, startled by the unexpected answer.

“ _Albert_?”

He’d expected the answer to be ‘Lucas.’ At the very least, something starting with an L, the L Abigail had dedicated her books to, and had been since she’d started writing them in the 1940’s. That L whom Henry had come to think of as the real Bertie.

“What?” Lucas said, frowning at him.

“No, I just—Albert. It’s… It’s a solid name,” he said haltingly. Wrong generation, then. “And your grandfather’s name?”

“Uh,” Lucas said, confused, and scratched his head. “It was, um…” He got a far away look, brow wrinkled as though he hadn’t thought of it for some time. “Geez, I think it was… Gordon. Yeah, Gordon Alexander. Man, he was a cranky old geezer. Little guy, and mean, too. He’d smack you on the backside if you got too close.”

Lucas stooped over in his chair and mimed a cane in his hand, snapping it out at an imaginary passerby, his face twisting up in an exaggerated scowl. Lucas straightened back up with a chuckle at his own joke. Then he blinked, that confused look coming back as if he just realized he was talking.

“Why do you ask?”

“I enjoy names. Lots of history behind names.” He smiled, guileless and wide-eyed, with the manipulative charm that seemed to easily distract Lucas. He wasn’t about to admit to his fantastical imaginings.

Lucas blinked again, then relaxed back in his chair, swinging his knees and setting the chair swivelling.

“Right. Yep, names. Cool things.” He pointed at Henry. “You know, there was a pirate named Henry Morgan.”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Henry said dryly. “Trust me, a source of endless hilarity for my classmates when I was young.”

“Kids are brutal, sometimes. Creatively nasty little monsters. My—uh, my friend’s kid, he spent a lot of time scrapping. He moved schools a few times, and had this theory that if you pop the head bully in the nose right away, the rest of the kids leave you alone. A good one, if you ask me.”

 

> _“Bertie, you can’t encourage fighting,” I said to him._
> 
> _Bertie looked at me with a sideways glance, then to little Abe in the living room, watching Leave it to Beaver on the television and holding a bag of frozen green peas to his swelling eye._
> 
> _“He’s not throwing his fists around willy-nilly, hon. Good pop to the head bully, and the rest leave him alone—seems like the kid’s got a pretty solid idea of how it all works.”_

 

The passage from _The Lost Years_ rattled through Henry’s head, and he fumbled one of the samples and it dropped with a clattered to the floor. He swore and ducked down to pick it up.

Lucas stood and leaned over the bench, looking down at Henry.

“Do you need a hand?”

“No, thank you. I—I’m tired, getting clumsy.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long day,” Lucas said pointedly. Lucas flopped back in his chair with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Henry said gamely once again.

He tried to focus on his clean-up task, but his ears were ringing with unspoken questions.

_How do you know Abigail Wahl? Who was Bertie?_

_Was it you?_

He felt so desperately foolish at the unbidden thoughts that his cheeks flushed warmly. He cleared his throat and leapt for any conversation to cover his sudden embarrassment.

“So! What did you do before working at the OCME?”

Lucas paused as though not sure if he’d answer, and Henry rather shamelessly shot a smile his way that was calculated to shift his attention. Lucas really wasn’t very subtle at the way he’d focus on Henry’s lips when he smiled, and it was a handy ace to have in his pocket.

It worked, because Lucas smiled back, a comical expression that was half open-mouthed confusion and half pleased ogling.

“I did some travelling,” Lucas finally said, as though eager to reward Henry for opening a conversation. “Through Indonesia and the Philippines.”

“That’s a part of the world I’ve never been to,” Henry said, stuffing more books into his bag. “It must be beautiful. Were you there long?”

“A few years, I guess.”

Henry slowed again, automatically running calculations in his head, and coming up short.

“Was that before medical school?”

“Oh. Uh, after?”

He frowned up at Lucas, who was now still in his chair, mouth tightly closed and looking like he wished he could take it back. His curiosity was unsheathed now, and there was no more setting it aside. He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes as he spun through the haphazard, poorly-fitting facts.

“That must have been a tight squeeze. Undergraduate, Masters, PhD, medical degree, travelling, then—is it four years at the OCME now?” Henry rattled off the list of requirements leading to this job. The math didn’t add up. “You _are_ thirty-five, correct?”

Which he was, unless Henry had forgotten Lucas’ age. He knew he hadn’t.

Lucas looked at him with glassy eyes, an awful excuse for a grin plastered on his face.

“Yeah, it was a crunch. But, you know.”

Something tickled at the back of his mind. Philippines, Philippines… The seventh Bertie Bruce novel— _Bertie versus the Typhoon_ —had involved a jaunt through the Philippines, hadn’t it? Something about Malaybalay City…

“I’ve heard the Kaamulan Festival is quite lovely,” Henry said, taking an instinctive, wild stab in the dark.

Lucas’ mouth started flapping open and shut silently like a gawping deep-sea fish before speech finally came to him.

“I know! I should get you a key,” Lucas blurted. He leapt to his feet and headed for the morgue double doors. “The HR manager, Romina, she’s always here late. I bet I can get you one. Yeah, I’ll get you one.”

He pushed through the doors and was gone.

It took him a good few minutes for Henry to spur himself back to action.

He continued packing slowly, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

It was explainable by any number of reasons. Poor memory on the details of how long Lucas had travelled. Lucas was shallow and lying about his age. He’d made it all up and knew he’d been caught when he couldn’t place the festival Henry mentioned. He’d graduated high school obscenely early and was the young whiz kid flying through his MD/PhD at a rate that even Henry, with his skills and talent, couldn’t manage.

_Or, he’s Bertie. Lots of years to study and travel if you live forever._

“Stop it,” Henry said aloud to himself.

“Stop what?”

Henry spun around. Lucas was back. He had a key in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Henry tried to plaster on an easy expression, but by Lucas’ carefully kept distance he wasn’t remotely successful.

“I was, er, worrying about my project and completing it in time for my graduation deadline. You’ve set an inspiring goal with your academic record.”

Lucas’ shoulders dropped noticeably from their stressed position up around his ears, and then he shifted as he took in the meaning of Henry’s words, smiling at the compliment.

“Oh, yeah, well. I had inspiration to study hard.”

The connection flashed in neon lights once more.

“Your friend the nurse?”

Lucas’ smile dropped away, his nervous tension back. He pressed the key into Henry’s hand, and it was warm and damp from Lucas’ sweaty palms. He set the papers on the bench top.

“Sign these, drop them off at the HR office on your way out. I’ll let security know you’re still in here after me and that it’s all kosher.” Lucas turned to leave, but stopped. “Sorry, I forgot to say—someone’s asking for you at front lobby. They just called down about it when I was in the HR office.”

“Who is it?”

Lucas shrugged and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“Don’t know. Anyway, ‘night, Henry.” Lucas turned from him and fled the morgue with long strides, head down and without a backwards glance.

Henry juggled the key in his hand.

Circumstantial, all of it, but his answers had done nothing to put Henry’s wild imaginings to rest, instead only adding fuel to the fire.

This was, he said to himself, a classic case of taking disparate facts and using them to fit his fantasy, building a whole reality around a work of fiction. It was all refuted by simple things like the basic laws of science and nature and common sense. One could take any number of circumstantial facts and create any number of insane theories. That was how people ended up in tinfoil hats on internet forums, and he would do well to better curate his own thoughts.

The gut-sick sense of wrongness wouldn’t be so easily dismissed, however.

Henry shook his head to clear it, and remembered the visitor who’d called up. A distraction would be ideal right now, and so he left for the lobby.

As he walked down the hall he aggressively occupied his thoughts with trying to puzzle out who might be here to speak with him. His landlord? The NYU international students liaison? There were few people in the city who would have business with him. As more and more possibilities occurred to him, his pace picked up until he was nearly jogging down the hall with eager curiosity to see which of his speculations were correct. He was far too desperate for anything to distract him.

He checked at the desk, and was pointed towards the main doors, to a slight figure standing there. Henry walked over briskly.

“Hello? You wished to speak with me?”

Honey-brown eyes as bright and lively as he remembered her from the last time he’d seen her; fair skin, smooth and pale, starkly contrasted by near black hair pinned up in a soft roll. Henry froze, his entire body going numb with the shock as she turned to him.

“Nora?” he gasped.

“Hello Henry,” she said softly. “It’s nice to see you.”

 

***

 

**Belbroughton, 2013**

Henry stood stiffly in his charcoal suit, bought special for the day. His mother stood on his left, and to his right was his sister Elizabeth, then William, and Edward on the end, in age order to greet the line of mourners. William and Elizabeth hadn’t had their usual customary squabble of Elizabeth being two minutes older and therefore first, instead settling into place quietly, holding each others’ hands and saying little. Elizabeth briefly rested her head on Henry’s shoulder, but then straightened again as the funeral ended and the church emptied out.

He felt like a stranger tucked in the midst of this family. In the year he’d been gone, in his first year at Oxford, he’d exchanged a handful of communications with his mother to hear how his father was doing, to get updates on his siblings, but little else. Edward hadn’t spoken to him or so much as looked at him, and while Elizabeth and William were happy to see him, the two of them were more reliant on each other, had tucked into their close relationship as protection from all the grief and change, the way they always had growing up.

The call to return home, that his father was in his last few days, had come on the day of his last final exam. Henry had delayed a day deliberating, and then made the drive. He’d been in time to say goodbye, to accept his father’s apology, but not in time enough to say he understood, and far, far too late to gain back the last year he had missed.

On his mother’s other side stood the large framed portrait of Robert Morgan, beloved husband and father, to be missed by the hundreds who turned up for his funeral—friends, classmates, business associates, family. Endless lines of sad faces, people giving their condolences, their tears, their platitudes of ’he was too young,’ and ‘if there’s anything we can do,’ and ‘all our love in this difficult time.’

Henry nodded to each person as they came, accepted hugs and kisses and handshakes until he was numb all over with the constant wash of words and touch, eventually all of it becoming meaningless.

The only thing he could feel was the deep, throbbing tick of his father’s pocket watch. His father had pressed it into Henry’s hand with his last breath, and Henry clutched it tight through the whole funeral. It provided a steady anchor while people spun past him without cessation.

“Thank you for coming, Nora,” he heard his mother say.

Henry blinked out of his stupor. Clutching his mother tight, face pressed to her shoulder, was Nora.

“I’m so sorry, Emily,” Nora said, voice thick.

“Thank you, love.”

Nora sniffled and pulled back. His mother didn’t let go of her hands right away, clutching them in hers. The two of them had always been close, and even after Henry had split with Nora, his mother had kept in touch with her ‘other daughter,’ as she’d called Nora since they were little. She never said it after they broke up, but Henry knew in his mother’s heart, Nora was still family.

It hurt all the worse, knowing he alone had been excised from Nora’s life, thrust out for having come up short.

He held his hand to his stomach and clenched his fingers tighter around the metal of the pocket watch, now the same temperature as his body. The reassuring tick felt so far away, even pressed to his stomach with painful force.

Nora flicked her eyes over to him. She licked her lips, then moved in front of him.

“Henry.”

“Hello, Nora,” he said. His voice was hoarse from fatigue and overuse.

She looked at his face, and then she reached out and rested her hand on his in a gesture of comfort. Her fingers brushed the pocket watch, and she looked down at it. He rolled his hand outward enough for her to see what he held, and she smiled a little, her thumb brushing over the engraved cover. She looked back up at him.

“Be well, Henry. Take care.”

Henry tried to speak, but he was too numb to do more than nod. She withdrew her hand and moved on to Elizabeth. Henry was abruptly confronted by a strange face; a colleague of his father’s, ever so sorry for his loss, pumping his hand with gruff, masculine bluster.

Henry glimpsed Nora as she left the church, and met her eye across a sea of dark-clad figures. Her small, kind smile was enough to make his heart lurch towards her, but she turned and left quickly before he could so much as smile in return.

After the funeral was done, once everyone was squared away in their various rooms with their various coping mechanisms—Edward poking at his tablet doing whatever thing caught his fancy these days, the twins curled up together watching a program, and his mother fast asleep on the couch—Henry went into his father’s study.

Alcohol wasn’t a very good solution, but it was one that Henry had come to rely on heavily in the past years away at Oxford. Certainly things seemed clearer and more bearable when he was drunk. Drunk, clubbing, or having sex. Sometimes all three, if he were particularly determined.

From the cupboard by the fireplace he took the bottle of cognac that was still there, hardly touched since that time nearly five years ago when he’d come here to talk about Nora, to talk about how his life had changed.

_“Promises can’t always be kept. To others, and sometimes to yourself.”_

The remembrance of his father’s words and their hidden meaning echoed in the silent, empty room. The room felt unused and dusty. Lifeless.

Henry took the bottle with him, threw on his coat and left the house, walking aimlessly in the cool evening. Eventually he ended up by the shallow little marshy pond near the sign welcoming people to the village of Belbroughton. In his childhood they’d come here with picnics in hand, skipping across the wet patchwork of tiny islands to find their way to the clusters of trees in the middle, where a sturdy clod of earth sat dryer than the rest, and they whiled away the summer hours there.

Henry forwent hopping over to the island and sat by the pond’s edge where it was flat and grassy. He was still in his suit from the funeral, but he knew he’d never wear it again, so it didn’t matter if it got muddy and grass-stained.

The cognac was too sweet and rich to be drinking at the rate he was drinking it, but it kept him warm and laid a blanket over his weary mind.

He half expected Nora to come. He’d tried to forget her in the years away at school, in the years of chaos and failed relationship attempts and schoolwork, but she wouldn’t leave his thoughts. She was nearby, she surely wouldn’t have left Belbroughton already after coming all this way for the funeral. She would know where he was. She’d always been part of his adventures in this little wooded place, his constant companion.

When Henry loved, he loved deeply—he loved forever. He’d sworn himself to her as a child, and his heart had never let go of that promise.

He drank until he was sick, and still she didn’t come.

Not that he really believed she would, even as he closed his eyes and pictured it. He was never going to see her again. Her, his father, both gone in their own way. He was on his own.

He’d leave, for real this time. Oxford wasn’t far enough. America maybe. He’d put an ocean between him and this life he didn’t belong in anymore. That would chase away his ghosts; they couldn’t follow him there.

Everything new, and so would he be. Henry Morgan, reborn yet again.

 

***

 

**New York, 2014**

Nora bit her lip as Henry said nothing. She was wringing her hands, clutching them together tightly.

“Henry?” she said again, taking a small step towards him.

“How did you find me?” he blurted.

Nora looked up at him, eyes wide, then looked away and around the OCME lobby as though trying to decide what to say.

“Your mum knew where you worked, but said you didn’t have a phone. I had your home address, but I didn’t know if I should…” She trailed off and sniffed, running a finger under her eyes quickly. She looked up at him. “It’s been a long time.”

She was older, now, and so was he, but she still had the ability to cut through him with every word. He’d tried for years to get anything from her, and aside from the few tender words at his father’s funeral, the sweet kindness that had destroyed all his careful work to forget her, he’d had nothing. For a while he’d lost himself in memories of their friendship and love, but it was cold comfort.

Despite himself, he was sucked in by her very presence. She was here. She was _real_.

The moment she smiled at him, he was so eager to believe it had all been a bad dream. For a perfect moment she was nothing but Nora, the companion who’d always been there for him, who had held his hand and known what his father’s loss meant, who’d always known what Henry meant before he said it, who followed his twisty leaps of logic, who knew his heart better than he did.

He was lonely, he was confused, and she’d found him when he needed a friend.

Surely that had to mean something?

He forcibly pulled himself back from the precipice of forgiveness and reconciliation. He took a physical step back to keep himself from reaching out to her. All those feelings were from a long time ago. There were years between them now, and more experiences than could be counted. He was a different man now—he wasn’t her Henry any longer.

“Nora, I…” He shook his head, adrenaline and confusion making him unsteady. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working for the Tribune now. I was in New York for a journalism conference, and I wanted to say hello.” He stared at her silently until she fidgeted and looked at the ground and continued. “And I’ve missed you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“You _missed_ me,” he repeated dumbly. “You missed me? Now? After years and not a word, after nothing, not even a proper goodbye, barely a word at my father’s—”

His voice was rising, and he had to force himself to stop, breath rushing through his nose with his anger, and he looked around the lobby, nodding to the front desk clerk who was now watching them with concern. He looked back to Nora, who was wilting in misery.

 _Good_ , he thought with poisonous satisfaction. _She should be miserable._

“I know, Henry. If I could take it back, do things different…” She looked up. “I was hoping you might be up for coffee, or dinner? We could catch up.”

“‘Catch up?’ You want to—to what, _chat_? What could there possibly be to say?”

She was the picture of stunned silence. One hand was on her purse, casually slung over one shoulder, worrying at the strap. She unconsciously pulled the purse in front of her like a shield, against her chest, folding her arms over it.

She’d always done that, held items like they could be her protective armour. He’d joked many a time that she treated words as though they were arrows being shot at her, and she’d scoffed dismissively, claiming she really didn’t do it all that often. He was struck by the urge to point it out to her, to win the old teasing argument that had been left hanging like one of so many of the dangling threads between them.

The memory softened him, and his spitefulness was replaced by shame. His words had been fully intended to wound her. How had it come to this? They’d loved each other, once. Surely he could find it in himself to talk and listen, if not forgive.

The lobby of the OCME was not the place for it, however.

“I’m off now, and didn’t have dinner plans. I suppose we could…”

“Really? I mean yes. Yes, that would be—yes!” she said, stuttering, her face lit up with hope.

“I need to collect my things.” It was sensible and normal, such a pedantic thing to say and do, but it felt foreign and strange, because _Nora_ was standing in front of him, and they were about to go to _dinner_.

So normal, and yet nothing he ever expected to do ever again.

“I’ll wait here,” she offered, and he nodded stiffly. She closed her eyes a moment and then smiled up at him. “Thank you, Henry.”

She lurched forward as if on instinct, and he froze. She continued hesitantly, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He automatically stooped to make it easier for her, and she pulled back with a whisper of a smile, and turned to go outside, presumably to wait for him.

Henry returned to the morgue to gather his things, but his mind was in such a confused uproar that he didn’t remember a single moment of it.

 

***

 

Nora was waiting for him when he exited onto the street. She turned around with a quick, sharp speed that suggested she’d been watching the door for his appearance. She gave him a relieved smile and hurried over to him. Perhaps she thought he wouldn’t have returned, would have dashed out the back exit and avoided her.

He wished he’d thought of it. But no; now that she was here, he was completely unable to tear himself away from staring at her, as though he couldn’t make his feeble mind understand that she was really here.

Uncertain what to do, he nodded his greeting, dredging up a polite smile in return.

“Did you have a preference for a dining location? I have some suggestions, if you are amenable.”

Her smile softened with starry-eyed fondness, the tilt of her head calling to mind nights spent regaling her with his latest theories and passions as she listened patiently, lying on her belly atop his bed, her legs bent and her stockinged feet waving in the air, while he paced the room in his enthusiasm, arms pinwheeling to emphasize his point.

Without warning, she wrapped her arms around him, catching him off-guard in a firm hug.

“Oh, Henry. You haven’t changed.”

He thought most assuredly that he had, but he couldn’t bring himself to push her away. He tentatively brought his arms around her, muddled by conflicting emotion. It was surprisingly natural, as though they still fit together by design. He said nothing, opting for silence to cover his confusion at her sudden affection, and his instinctive response to it.

She backed off abruptly, as though remembering the rift between them, and ducked her head.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he said automatically.

The gratefulness of her expression was nearly painful, and his awkward discomfort morphed into fury in the space of a breath. Why should it be alright? Why should he excuse anything she said or did?

He clenched his teeth and straightened, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Shall we?”

She imitated his body language and tucked her hands away as well.

“Lead on.”

Henry took her to an Ethiopian restaurant he’d found early in his visit. The discussion of the various types of spices in the different dishes was good for filling the awkward silence, both of them seizing with too much enthusiasm on the subject.

“How is it that you’re working in a morgue?” Nora asked.

“My work is largely uninvolved with the daily proceedings—New York University has an arrangement with the city to provide workspace and research access to the bodies, and so I work independently.”

“I see. Must take getting used to, being around all those dead bodies.”

“I’m sure I’ll see worse in my residency,” Henry said. “Though it has it’s interesting points. The assistant chief medical examiner allowed me to accompany him and dabble in crime scene forensics, which I will admit I found fascinating. I had the opportunity to…”

Nora was leaning on the table, chin propped on her hand as she watched him with avid interest, eyes nearly dancing with excitement as he talked, and he realized he’d raised his voice in his enthusiasm, energized and unguarded. He chuckled, uncomfortable at letting himself slip in her presence.

“Possibly not dinner conversation,” he said. Nora frowned, eyebrows coming together as she puzzled over his abrupt stop, and he reached for the water pitcher to refill his glass. “But yes, Lucas has been most welcoming.”

“Lucas?”

“Sorry, the assistant chief M.E. I referred to.”

“Oh, not a—not your… um.”

She stumbled to a stop as she avoided his gaze and shifted in her seat. He narrowed his eyes, reading between the lines.

“My boyfriend? No, I’m not… No.”

“Ah.” She smiled weakly and tucked her hair behind her ears. “No, me neither.”

Henry stuffed a bite of food in his mouth, much bigger than was strictly polite, to give himself the reprieve from awkward conversation for the precious few extra seconds. He looked up to find that Nora had done exactly the same, studying her plate in front of her with intense focus. However, chewing only lasted so long and they were stuck here until a reasonable amount of their meal was eaten, so Henry was forced himself to go searching for a conversational gambit to break the painful silence.

“You said you were in town for a conference?”

She looked up with what looked like desperate relief, and she nodded vigorously.

“I’m giving a presentation, and… well, and receiving an award.”

“Really?” He raised an eyebrow, intrigued. He knew the embarrassed tone of her voice well, could remember the way she’d downplay her achievements, would quietly let accolades slip.

She shrugged as she ripped off a piece of injera and dipped it in the pot of lamb stew between them.

“I wrote a story last year that exposed fraud in a Cabinet appointment in 2012—hardly surprising, corruption in the government, I know, but I came across this email, and it was immediately apparent what I’d found. I ran with it, and…” She shrugged, licking one finger. “I was nominated. Still can’t believe I won.”

“I can. I always knew you’d do amazing things.”

It was easy to be sincere in his praise. Nora was bright—brighter than him in many things, perceptive and sharp, quick to understand people. He had no doubt she’d instantly pinpointed the route to her discovery, the article likely clear and insightful, as her writing had always been, even when they’d been young and she’d worked hard crafting every word for essay contests and student paper articles, making Henry read them and then _tsking_ when he failed to find the faults she did.

Nora’s cheeks were pink, and he realized he’d been beaming at her, caught up in his pride over her achievements and successes. Her eyes were as clear and light as he remembered. She looked down at his hands on the table, resting in the neutral land between them, and she tentatively reached out to put hers over his.

Her touch was as soft as at his father’s funeral, as warm, as loving. Henry’s heart beat so hard he could hear his blood rushing in his ears. She met his eyes again, and for a few seconds, all was still and silent, and they were sixteen again with a whole future ahead of them.

A server clearing dishes at the nearby table clattered the plates in his hands, and the spell was broken. Henry blinked, quickly struck the smile off his face and cleared his throat as he jerked his hands free of hers. He busied himself with his napkin, resettling it on his lap, furious with himself, furious at the flush of goodwill in his heart. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness, having frozen him out without even a goodbye. What was this farce? What was even happening here?

“Yes, your ability to make swift, unilateral decisions is no doubt a boon in your profession. Congratulations, Nora. I’m sure the award will serve you well in your future career.”

It was cold and formally said, and the result was instantaneous. Nora’s shoulders slumped and she dropped her gaze to her plate. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from apologizing.

Henry had a firm grip on the knife in her stomach, and it took nothing to twist it and make her writhe. The monstrous, petty satisfaction he took in having that power over her was hideous, feeling justified in being able to finally strike back after she’d denied him so many times, refused to even speak to him for so long. It was his opportunity to pay her back for the agony she’d put him through.

However, Nora had come to him sincerely, offering peace. She’d been weathering and soldiering onward with pleasant catch-up conversation past each cold attack from Henry. She didn’t rebuke him, didn’t try to defend herself or call him on his backhanded, vicious rudeness. It was as though she were serving penance, accepting his rage without complaint even as he wounded her again and again.

This time, however, her bottom lip trembled before she bit it and lowered her head further so he couldn’t see her face. Guilt sucked all the vindictive pleasure out of his action. He had no taste for vengeance.

“I’m sorry, Nora. I’m trying, but…”

Nora leaned an elbow on the table and rested her face in her hand, covering her eyes.

“No, Henry. I’m sorry. I was an idiot to think we could make things right after all this time. I should have left it in the past, not dug all this up again. But after I saw you at your dad’s funeral, I kept thinking about you, and wondering how you were, and I’ve missed you so much—”

Her voice thickened and distorted as she spoke, and she finally cut off with a choked sob, and her shoulders shook.

Two patrons to their right, an elderly man and woman, glanced over at them at the sound. The woman looked she wanted to lean over and ask if Nora was okay, but the man was tugging at her sleeve with urgent little shakes of his head. They lapsed into a whispered argument, with the old woman periodically shooting filthy looks at Henry, obviously pinning him as the responsible party for Nora’s tears.

“Please, Nora,” he whispered, leaning forward. “Don’t cry, please.”

At that she looked up, eyes red, mouth twisted with annoyance even as she sniffled.

“It’s not like I _planned_ to have a good wail mid-dinner. H’ors d’oeuvres, entrees, then some blubbering as an aperitif,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm, and she wiped at her eyes furiously. “Don’t be a twat, Henry.”

“Tell him, sweetheart,” the old woman muttered, and the old man hissed at her to be quiet.

“I didn’t say you were doing it on purpose, just that you don’t _have_ to. I didn’t mean—“

“I know! Henry Morgan, best of intentions. Same as ever.”

Henry glared at her, and she glared back at him.

She had the same temper he remembered; he’d always used to tell her to take a breath before she let fly. She never liked crying in public, and how very like her it was to shift her embarrassment into anger.

In the set of her furrowed brow and the slight pout he saw his childhood friend—the literal stomping of her feet when she had a fit, and how she’d used to howl bloody murder when he teased her for it while she was angry. When they were twelve she’d chased him along the river bank for saying she looked a pink piglet when she was flushed and shouting. She’d called him a twat then, too, and worse.

He chuckled at the unexpected memory, because even though she was spitting mad, it was all so achingly familiar.

She blinked at him, disarmed by his reaction. After a moment she shook her head, laughing weakly.

“Sorry. This is a disaster,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, still chuckling. They’d mostly finished the food, and he didn’t think either of them were in the mood to eat more. “Why don’t we go?”

She nodded her agreement, and Henry caught the eye of the server as Nora gathered up her things.

“They’re both nuts,” the old lady grumbled to her companion as he and Nora left the restaurant.

It was second nature to put his hand on the small of her back as they walked from the restaurant, and she leaned against him automatically. For an instant he was sucked into the delusion that their friendship had never ended. They stopped out front of the restaurant, looking to each other rather than their respective paths back to home and hotel.

“It’s good to see you, Henry. I’ve hoped—I don’t know. I’ve hoped you’ve been happy.”

“Certainly. I finished first in my class last year at Oxford, and the internship has—“

“That’s not what I meant.”

He knew it wasn’t. Once again, she was able to cut through his bluster to the heart of the matter. He didn’t want her to know of the confusing, angry, lonely years, of how he still dreamed of her some nights, of how close to the surface all his memories of her lay.

She read it on him, as easily as reading a book, and her mouth twisted in a wry smile.

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “I’m still working on it.”

He stood at the crossroads of decision. The orange of the street lights lit the flyaway strands of her hair, giving her a glow. Henry wished he could so easily pluck the thoughts from her head as she seemed to do from his. He wished they could talk more—just a little more. Just another few moments in this pleasantly false world where nothing had gone wrong, where he lived in the future he’d dreamed he would have.

It was in that moment of sudden weakness that he said, “Would you like to come over for coffee?”

She looked up at him, eyes still red-rimmed from tears, and she nodded, smiling faintly once again.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

His stomach flopped with nerves. He wasn’t certain exactly what he had offered, and what had been accepted.

Henry hailed a cab, and somehow his hand ended up in hers as they rode towards his home.

 

***


	10. Revelations

“I fucked up, Abe,” Lucas said, pacing around the living room, raking his fingers through his hair. “I really, really fucked up.”

“Lucas, would you—Luke! Come on, sit down for a second, would you?”

Lucas finally relented and threw himself onto the couch, lying down and grabbing a throw pillow to smash over his face. He was going to lose his mind. Him and his big mouth. Blabbing away all the time, and Henry _listening_ this whole time, thinking and making connections and taking bits of evidence and figuring it all out.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Abe shoved at Lucas’ feet so he could sit on the end of the couch. Lucas dropped them to the floor to give him room.

“He’s read Abigail’s books,” he moaned into the pillow. “‘Course he’s read them—little English kid, he’s probably read them all. And it’s Henry, so of course he _remembers_ them too. Why didn’t I even _think_ of it?” He tossed the pillow onto the floor and sat up, feeling nauseated with stress and fear. “And then he was asking all these questions about where I was, and like, figuring out how long things were supposed to take, and—come on, I can’t do math under stress! Then he mentioned this festival I was at that Abigail wrote about! I fucked it up, and he’s going to figure it out and I’m going to have to leave, and I _like_ it here, Abe. All because I can’t keep my freakin’ mouth shut.”

He wiped his hands over his face, distressed. Abe’s mouth was twisted into a lopsided smile, his head propped up on one fist.

“What did you say that made him curious?”

“I dunno, little things. I guess after all that review and editing we did on Abigail’s manuscript, there’s been little bits and pieces left floating around in my head, and I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, and I just—I didn’t think about it. I was just kinda rambling. C’mon, it’s not like anyone usually listens to all the crap I…” He scowled at Abe’s chuckle. “It’s not funny, he _knows_!”

“So what if he does?” Abe said. “What’s the worst that’ll happen?”

“What do you mean what’s the worst that’ll happen? You know I got lynched for voodoo once?”

“They don’t do that anymore, y’know.”

“No! They lock you up because you’re crazy. Then when you sit there in your little crazy cell for two decades and don’t age, they run tests on you, and cut little pieces off you, and next thing you know pharmaceutical companies are trying to make drugs of your blood and turn you into a replenishable resource for a magical fountain of youth they can sell to people, and you’re science’s lab rat for another dozen years…”

Lucas’ chest was heaving, all the memories flooding back that he’d locked away from Before Abigail—and it was marked that way in his mind, the B.A. years, as though meeting her was Year Zero, and everything after that was the modern history he chose to remember. There were damned good reasons he was grateful to be a background player in life, because being the main attraction wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Abe leaned forward and took Lucas’ hand, and Lucas gripped it. He grimaced at Abe’s barely concealed shock. Way, way too much information.

“Sorry. Sorry, you didn’t need to hear any of that.”

If there’s one thing Lucas was good at, it was leaving the past behind and moving forward. He loved new things, because they made it easy to shuffle the bad off his back and forget it. Some stuff lingered, obviously, but only if he wandered down the wrong memory path. He’d made sure to leave those stories untold, to never burden Abe with them. Abigail had known there was more than the stories Lucas shared with her, more than the simple trials she wrote about to make Bertie real, but she didn’t push.

“Jesus, Lucas. I’m not a kid anymore. If you need to talk, you talk. I’m not Mom, but I’ll listen.”

Abe’s thumb worried at the back of Lucas’ hand, and Lucas repositioned his grip to hold his hand tighter. Abe might say that, but when he looked at Lucas with that look of care and concern he’d picked up from Abigail, it was so easy to look past the grey hairs and wrinkles to the little boy he’d teased and frolicked with, who’d confessed his nightmares and crushes, who’d shared his bubble gum from each new baseball card and read comic books by flashlight with him. The kid he’d loved, tried to protect, and to whom he’d never wanted to become a cross to bear.

Immortality was a pain in the ass, and he didn’t need to make Abe’s life harder because of it. That included sharing all the crap Lucas tried to forget.

“It’s a long time ago, and I really don’t think about it. It’s over.” He squeezed Abe’s hand one more time and released it, blowing out a puff of air and giving a short laugh. “See? Me and my big mouth. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me these days.”

Abe tried to smile with him, but it was forced.

“I, ah, I might have mentioned some stuff about Mom. Said her name, a few things like that. I didn’t think anything of it, but maybe it made Henry—”

“It’s okay, Abe. She’s your mom, it’s your life. You shouldn’t not talk about it because of me.”

Abe smiled a little more genuinely.

“I guess eventually something like this was going to happen. The world’s getting smaller, and your mouth is only getting bigger.” He lifted his eyebrows, and Lucas snorted.

“Yeah, I guess… I just never thought anyone would ever take it seriously, you know? Abigail’s books have been out there for a long time, and if anything, it all being fictionalized makes it easier to hide it all. But he was asking questions, and—“

“Lucas, before you get yourself all fired up, I really don’t think Henry means any harm. Maybe he’s nosy and snoopy, but he seems like a good guy.” Abe knocked him on the arm. “Would a friend you could trust be so bad?”

“I was lucky enough to meet your mom—she was special. Friends like that only come along once in a lifetime, kiddo.”

“And you’re the guy who lives for many lifetimes, so you might just be in luck.” Abe stood up with a grunt of effort. “What if you give him a chance? Bet he’ll surprise you.”

He left Lucas to his fretting.

Lucas eventually drifted downstairs, popping in a DVD and lying on the couch staring at the ceiling mulling things over to the background noise of _Dr. Strangelove_.

 _Give him a chance,_ Abe said. It did linger in the back of his mind, sometimes, telling Henry everything. What was it about Henry that made him so loose-lipped?

There was something about him under all his sharp-tongued reserve, a kind honesty that reminded him of Abigail. An energy, a zest for life that was buried under those layers of cocky self-assurance. A fair bit of grief, too, though Henry had tried very hard not to let them see it.

Abigail had extended a hand to Lucas when he needed it. She’d been so good at these things, good at people. He could picture her, sitting there delicately prying Henry out of his shell, fixing everything with her patient ability to listen and understand.

The movie held no interest, and he didn’t relish being alone tonight. Lucas turned off the screen and made his way back upstairs. Rather than seek out Abe, however, he pulled out a copy of _The Lost Years_ , the one he’d purchased out of spite, and sat down on the couch with it.

He might not have Abigail, but he still had her words. She’d left him with this last gift, the story of their early years together. She’d built the character of Bertie Bruce on all of Lucas’ exaggerated tall tales, and they were lighthearted stories. They made him feel like a swashbuckling adventurer when he read them.

This book reminded him of the true life he’d shared with her, was far more Lucas than it was Bertie. She’d still painted him in rosy tones, made him more than he was, and all of it done with love. She’d seen him as more than he was, and through her eyes he saw himself as more. For a while, he’d taken centre stage in his own life, and been privileged enough to share it with her.

God, he missed her. She always knew what to do.

“I wish you were here, Abby,” he said into the quiet.

 

***

 

> **_Chapter 8_ **
> 
> _We arrived in New York in the heat of late summer in 1945, where the smell of garbage was so thick in our horrible little apartment that I nearly turned around and marched right back onto the boat._
> 
> _Bertie was hopping with excitement, however, insistent that our humble circumstances meant only great things to come._
> 
> _“Like phoenixes rising from the ashes, diamonds in the rough! It’ll be an adventure, hon, you’ll see.”_
> 
> _His enthusiasm drew me onward and lent me an energy I needed. Being a mother was a new and demanding role I was still adjusting to. Bertie was always there to help, however, and I felt so much less alone. Though our courtship had been an unconventional one and our marriage one that could be termed ‘of convenience,’ Bertie was an incredibly loving and supportive partner. When he turned his mind to something, he was devoted and steadfast, and I was lucky enough to have found him._
> 
> _To pass the quiet hours when Abraham was sleeping, we’d listen to the radio plays on our tiny little wireless, and when the late-night news was done and the music played, Bertie would tell me stories. He’d lived longer than I had realized, been so many places that it was nearly impossible to believe._
> 
> _He touched on so many places and times, but there was one he avoided._
> 
> _“You never told me how it all began,” I said one night as we sat together on the couch, me against his side, him with his arm around me._
> 
> _“That’s a long time ago.”_
> 
> _“Surely you haven’t forgotten,” I said._
> 
> _“No. No, I couldn’t forget that.”_
> 
> _He was so serious and sombre. Bertie did not let life weigh him down, though I suspected he managed that often by choosing carefully what he remembered and what he forgot. Some events leave their mark, even if we wish to forget them._
> 
> _“I was a farm kid. Big family in Pennsylvania. I hated it though. Can you imagine me, a farmer? The pigs knew I was scared of ‘em, I swear. They’d trap me against the rails of the fence when I went to feed them, lean right on me while they’d root through the trough, not paying me any mind, while I hollered for my brothers. I ran away after my dad died to go live in the town. I found work in a tavern, this place that had a little theatre with live shows for the patrons. They were… uh…”_
> 
> _He coughed and trailed off, embarrassed, and made several complicated motions with his hands before I realized what he meant._
> 
> _“Bawdy shows?”_
> 
> _“Er, yeah,” he said, embarrassed. “Yeah, that kind.”_
> 
> _“Bertie, I’m shocked!” I said, mockingly chastising him._
> 
> _Bertie knew me well enough to hear the tease, and laughed with me._
> 
> _“Yeah, yeah, I know. It was an interesting time. I liked it though—the girls were sweet, and the man who owned the tavern was a good guy. The people who came weren’t always so great, though. Men got too personal with the girls who worked there, if you know what I mean.”_
> 
> _I did. I knew too well. Life as a nurse in the war was not an easy one, and not just because of the threat from the opposing side. I’d seen my own share of the darker side of some men and their so-called affection. I, like Bertie, did not care to dwell on a past I could do nothing about. I nodded my understanding._
> 
> _“One night, Mary—I remember her name was Mary, but I can’t remember her last name for the life of me—she came running to me as I was fetching a cask from out back. One of the dopes who’d taken a shine to her wouldn’t leave her alone, was getting…anyway, it was bad. I didn’t know what to do. I’m no hero, I never have been. I told her we should run. I said I’d hide her, but he saw us take off and he followed. He caught us at a bridge over the river. I tried to delay him and give her a chance to get away. He stabbed me, here.”_
> 
> _He put a hand to his side. I’d seen the scar there, one I’d taken to be a wound from an operation. I put my hand over his, wishing I could heal the memory as well as the scar._
> 
> _“He threw me into the river, and I must have floated downstream. I guess she got far enough ahead that she got help, because he ended up in prison—which I know because he was going to be sent down for my murder, except I turned up naked the next day at the tavern.”_
> 
> _“He did murder you,” I said. I stroked his hand. “Even if you survived, it was murder.”_
> 
> _Bertie captured my hand and held it to his chest. His heart was pounding._
> 
> _“I thought it was a dream, or a fluke, or something. Maybe he hadn’t stabbed me, I didn’t know. He went to jail for a few years and moved on. I kept working at the tavern. Mary thought the sun rose and set with me, and I was a bit of a hero with the girls, though I sure didn’t know how I’d managed it. I stayed there for a good ten years more before I started to realize I wasn’t getting any older. People kept remarking on it, and after a while the way they looked at me made me a little nervous. I left. I didn’t have a reason to stay._
> 
> _“I moved on, and I kept moving. I kept thinking it would end, and it didn’t. It was thirty years after that first death before I was shot in a hunting accident and I figured out the full extent of what had happened to me. I’ve been kicking around ever since.”_
> 
> _The resignation in his voice broke my heart._
> 
> _“Bertie, you are one of the greatest heroes I’ve ever known,” I said._
> 
> _I kissed him on the cheek, which was damp, and then wiped away his tears._
> 
> _After that night, I was determined that one day I would find a way to show him exactly how brave and important a person he was, for I feared that Bertie truly did not know._

 

_***_

 

Nora took a swig of the thick red merlot Henry had dug out of the cupboard. A trickle escaped the corner of her mouth, and she wiped at it with the back of her hand, an embarrassed giggle following her swallowed mouthful. She passed the bottle back to Henry. It was edging towards empty, between the two of them.

Like a New York stereotype, they’d crawled out the window of Henry’s apartment and were sitting on the fire escape, looking out over what view of the city it afforded them. They faced the back of another building of apartments, but if they leaned, they could see down the avenue of buildings to the brighter lights, see the tall towers. It was growing bitter cold, but the wine was fortifying him against it.

“Your mum said I had to report back on everything if I did see you,” Nora said, wrapping her arms around her. She looked back through the window of his apartment at the furnishings. “I think she pictures you living in the morgue with all the dead bodies. Wanted visual confirmation from a primary source that you are indeed alive and well.”

Henry snorted, his mouth full of wine, then swallowed it down.

“You talk with her?”

“An email now and then. A little more often since Robert died. She’s lonely.”

The mention of his father and Henry’s shirked responsibilities cast a pall over the conversation. Henry took another drink from the bottle and hung his head.

“I’m sorry, Henry. I know you loved him.”

“He was an arms dealer, you know,” Henry scoffed, abruptly bitter.

Nora was silent for several seconds. He wondered if he’d finally succeeded in striking a blow that would drive her away. Instead, she put an arm around him and squeezed him around the ribcage.

“He was still your dad.”

He wished she’d been there that night in Belbroughton when he’d drank himself into oblivion by the river. This, just like this, was exactly what he’d needed then.

He should have felt it was too little, too late. He prodded himself to react so, but instead he raised his arm and slung it around her in return, pulling her close.

She came willingly with a contented sigh, and he buried his nose in her hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

She burrowed against his side, tucking into his warmth, and he smiled into her hair. It was as though no time had passed, and this was the river bank, or the little daybed of her bedroom. Henry closed his eyes.

“I saw you at the funeral,” she said softly, “and I was still angry, a little, even though it’d been a long time. I saw you, and suddenly it seemed so pointless to be angry about all these things. I should have forgotten, but I didn’t.”

“I haven’t,” he confessed. “I never have.”

She freed herself and looked up at him, still in the circle of his half-embrace. Her profile was lit by city light.

“I know I could have reacted better, but how it all happened—I didn’t know what to do. Then all the letters, letters begging me to reconsider, even though you’d told me you were gay… It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t bear it, I didn’t know how to speak to you, and then it had been so long… I thought it would get better, that maybe someday we could be friends. I thought what I did was for the best.”

Her voice was shaking. It was as though they’d cut back to the very conversation they’d not finished as she stood there in his hallway, eyes wide with fear, to the mad moment of Henry, wine-soaked, pounding on her door and howling for her understanding.

“I could have handled it better as well,” he said carefully. “You were the first person I told. I didn’t care what it meant. I only wanted to be sure nothing would change between us. I’ve loved you since I could remember. Nothing could change that.”

He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, stroking her soft skin, and Nora drew in a sharp breath at the touch. She didn’t pull away, and Henry followed the line of her jaw, tucked the hair back behind her ear, barely aware of slipping into the past. How easily he still loved her.

“I’d have done anything for you, Nora. I’d have made it work. You should have trusted me.”

Her eyes flickered to his mouth. He knew what would happen, could see the action unfurl before it occurred. He was still self-aware enough to know that he’d tacitly offered this when he invited her here, when he’d opened himself to both her apology, and his in return.

Nora leaned in hesitantly and kissed him, and when he didn’t pull away she sighed and leaned into him. She brought her hand to his neck, holding him gently.

It was trusting, honest, with all the intimacy they used to share. He found giddy joy in kissing her, in feeling her eagerness to be close to him.

He wanted to wrap her in a hug, to hold her close, to tell her every single moment she’d missed. He missed the team they’d been, the other half of him who’d been the sensible balance to his passionate impulsiveness, who’d been the counterweight to his moods, who’d been the decisiveness he needed at times, who’d been the perfect fit. He missed the evenings cuddled together, the relief in the soothing stroke of her hand on his head, the loving reward in being able to sweep away her troubles and concerns in return. He’d never found another person who occupied that role.

They broke the kiss and Nora was breathing heavily, her eyes closed. She blinked them open, and they were cloudy with the haze of interest and arousal, all thing he recognized but didn’t feel for her. A sharp and unpleasant ripple of nerves ran through him. A stupidly simple missing key that seemed to make all the difference to her, though it made no difference to him in how much he loved her.

“Henry?” she whispered.

“I do still love you, Nora—”

Before he could finish she leaned in and kissed him again.

He squeezed his eyes shut as his anxiety soared and muffled the sweet intimacy of having her in his arms. He should stop her. He should try to explain.

He didn’t.

She was happy, and she wanted him. For the first time in years she gave a damn about him, and he didn’t want to let the moment go.

Henry was, by the feedback he’d received over the years, quite a good kisser. He ran his hand over her back and up her neck to cup the back of her head, his other hand running along her thigh, keeping her close.

He tried; he really tried, but he couldn’t find the key to turn it from mechanical action into passion. He nipped at her lips, stroked her hair and the line of her neck, trying so hard, but it was all motion without meaning. He put on a convincing show, however, and she was drawn in, eagerly kissing him back, her fingers weaving in his hair.

After another minute she subsided. He tried to keep her close but she wriggled back from him, leaning back against the rough brick exterior of the building, on the moulding of his living room window, so she could look into his face and see him better.

“This isn’t real, is it?” She bit her lip, eyes darting away, and she pulled her hands away, holding them against her chest, putting a wall between them even as he held her. She shook her head and pushed away from him. “God, I’m an idiot.”

She got to her feet, leaving him cold in the night air. She ducked through the window and climbed into his apartment, and he scrambled up after her, following her.

“Nora?“

She turned around and held up her hands to stop him, and he stumbled to a halt.

“Why, Henry? Why would you say you love me, when…” She threw her hand towards the window, towards his actions.

“I didn’t lie. You’re more than a friend to me,” he said. “You always have been.”

“But you’re _gay_ , Henry!”

“Yes! I can still love you, why can’t you understand that?”

She covered her face, groaning with frustration.

“Please stop saying that. It doesn’t help. I’ve already tried for years to stop having hope and move on.”

“You don’t have to!”

“It’s not the same! I don’t want fake kisses and forced sex! It’s so much worse than nothing!”

“No—it’s not like that, it’s not…”

He had no answer. He didn’t know how to describe it. Words so seldom failed him, and it was dizzyingly painful to feel so helpless to express himself. He looked around the living room, trying to capture his thoughts into words, and his eyes fell on the Bertie Bruce novel on the end table by the armchair. He seized it up with wild inspiration and brandished it at her.

“Like this! Like Bertie and the nurse. He loved her, she loved him, but they weren’t lovers. They still raised a child, had a life together, _full_ lives. They cared about each other, they…”

He trailed off as Nora stared at him, and he saw himself reflected in her eyes. He looked like a madman, waving a children’s book around as evidence, as though a relationship could be argued like a case in court, to be found viable or inviable by the jury of one he was trying to convince. When had he begun to think of this book as real, as containing fact rather than fiction? He stared at the book in his hand, at the cover art, half-expecting to find Lucas’ face in place of the bland-faced man in military uniform.

“It’s a fairy story, Henry. It’s not real life.”

“I know that.” She thought he was crazy, and he wasn’t sure he blamed her. He tossed the book aside and it slid across the table top and fell off the edge to the floor, pages bending and crumpling as it landed on edge. “I wanted to make you happy, Nora. That’s all.”

“I can’t separate sex and love so easily.”

For one wild moment, a life flashed before him of what it would have been like if he’d never told her. Evenings of trying to match her body to his, of quiet pining for a physical intimacy he would crave but not indulge, easily countered by the deep security of loving her, of being loved. A life together, a future, solid and secure and safe. What was sex to that? How could the temporary, fleeting comfort of empty encounters compare?

He clutched at his hair, fingers tight in the curls, gripping until tears came to his eyes. The sharp pain focused him, made the muddy scramble of his thoughts surface from the drowning flood of emotion.

“Then clearly we’re very different. I could have. For you, I would have.” He couldn’t keep the bitter accusation from his voice.

“What if you fell in love with a man—or I did—and we were trapped in this…whatever you’re suggesting. You would hate me for it eventually, or I would hate you. One of us had to be sensible here, Henry, and it’s obviously not going to be you. There is a gap between us, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.”

The look of pity on her face was like a slap, her dismissal of his feelings like a punishment for falling short in something he couldn’t change about himself. She knew him, saw him, and she found him lacking.

She turned away and gathered up her coat from where she’d draped it over the back of the armchair, and walked to the door. He didn’t move to follow her.

“I’m sorry I came. Goodbye, Henry. This is for the best.”

She slipped out the door and was gone.

 


	11. The Real Bertie Bruce

If Henry believed in fate, he’d accuse it of dragging him back to the collectibles shop on the corner of Suffolk and Stanton for its own amusement.

After Nora left, after finishing the bottle of wine alone—and how like the last time she’d left him, _abandoned_ him to his misery—he left the confining stuffiness of his ugly little apartment to walk himself into exhaustion

He had no door to bang down tonight. Even if he did, he had no desire to. He was done. The ashes of that love were fast cooling under the cold winds of brutal reality. He knew he’d made a mistake in ever trusting her, ever confiding in her.

Fool him once, shame on her. Fool him twice…

After winding his way around Manhattan for hours, feet dragging and head sore, he turned to make his route take him past _Abe’s Collectibles_.

He was so exhausted he could have fallen asleep standing up, and he should have hailed a cab and gone home, but instead he knocked on the door of the shop. It was past eleven at night, and he expected no response, but he knocked anyway out of a maudlin desire to underscore to himself that he was completely alone.  He despised his self-pity even as he catered to it.

Instead, Abe poked his head through the doorway that lead to the staircase for the upstairs. Henry flinched back from the door in surprise. He had the wild instinct to sprint away, but Abe was already waving at him and coming towards the door.

He’d only meant to humour his melancholy and then walk onward, and now…  He quickly tidied his hair and wiped his face to make sure it was dry before Abe got to the door and unlocked it.

“Hey kid, what’s up?”  Abe opened the door and beckoned for Henry to come inside.  “Damn, it’s cold out there.”

Henry didn’t budge, standing on the sidewalk with agonized embarrassment.

“I was just passing by, and thought…” he scrabbled through excuses, finally seizing on one.  “I thought I should ask what kind of wine to bring on Sunday.”

Abe leaned an elbow on the door’s bar handle and sized Henry up, brow furrowed. Henry ducked his chin, trying to burrow into his scarf while his ears burned with embarrassment.  He should have run away rather than stand here, even if he looked like a child ringing the doorbell and running off snickering into the night. It would have been much better than this knowing inspection.

“Right.  Wine is a complicated subject.  It can take a while to pick the right one. Come on up and we’ll talk it over.”

He stepped back into the shop and held the door at arm’s length in a very obvious sign that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“I don’t want to impose again,” Henry objected weakly.

“Hey, heat’s not free.”  Abe waved his hand impatiently towards the shop interior.  “Get your butt in here so I can close the door.”

“Abe, I…”

Abe glared at him, and Henry buttoned his mouth and walked in as told.  Abe put an arm around his shoulders and guided him towards the stairs, half friendly direction and half embrace, and Henry realized he was even more exhausted than he’d thought.  He was half-dead on his feet, not entirely sober, and the warmth of indoors was nowhere near as stimulating as the bracing cold.

“C’mon, we’ll get you some of that coffee you Britons are so fond of.”

That got a weak laugh out of Henry. He glanced to his side, meeting Abe’s kind smile with a sheepish grin.

“Actually, I believe tea would be excellent at this point.”

“Ah,” Abe said, shaking his head with mock disgust.  “How’s a guy supposed to keep up?  Well don’t worry, my tea’s as good as my coffee.”

He nearly pushed Henry up the last few stairs when he balked at the top, and both of them emerged at the same time to see a surprised Lucas looking at them from the living room where he was kicked back on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, reading a paperback novel.  He peered at them over the top of the book, and when he registered who Henry was he dropped his feet to the floor and scrambled forward. He thrust the book under the pile of newspapers and magazines lying haphazardly on the table top.

“Hi, Henry. Why are you—is there—I mean, are you… Hi?”

“Henry stopped in to discuss wine.” Abe said as he took Henry’s coat and scarf from him, not giving him the chance to argue.  “Go on, have a seat.  I’ll be there in a sec.”

Henry went into the living room as instructed, gingerly picking an armchair by the fireplace built into the wall.  He could do this. A few minutes of small talk, then he’d be on his way. He couldn’t help the sigh of relief when he sat, taking the pressure off his aching feet.

“So, wine?” Lucas stuttered as he clapped his hands in painful enthusiasm.

“Ah, yes.  Wine.”  What a miserable bed he’d made for himself, but now he’d have to lie in it. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, trying to martial his thoughts. “I—I hadn’t considered what to bring for Sunday.  So I…”

It sounded so pathetic to his own ears that he stopped, dropping his hands to his lap and staring at Lucas glumly. Lucas gaped back at him a moment, then leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees as he peered at Henry.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. Just lovely, thanks.” He was behaving like a surly child, resisting purely for the sake of resistance, rude and sour.  He was so tired that he had lost any sense of decorum.  He grimaced and looked away from Lucas’ wide-eyed confusion. “Sorry.  I’ve had an unexpectedly long day.”

Lucas looked into the kitchen towards Abe, as though wishing he’d get over here sooner, but the rattling of the kettle on the stovetop said he wouldn’t be there all that quickly. He scratched at his chin thoughtfully, then shrugged as though giving a mental _what the hell._

“Is this about the girl who picked you up today?”

Henry blinked in shock.

“How did you know about her?”

“I kinda saw you guys on my way out—I had one more thing to sign at HR so I was delayed a bit, and you were there. Not that I was spying or anything, but you’re not typically running around hugging people willy-nilly, so it was kind of notable. I figured she must be somebody. And it didn’t look like one of those real happy end-of-film ‘run towards each other in slow-mo’ hugs. More like a ‘you’re back from the dead and I’m not sure if you’re real’ kind of hugs.”

“I didn’t realize hugs were cinematically categorized with such precision,” Henry said.

Lucas interlacing his fingers and brought his hands to his mouth, eyes narrowed in thought as he eyed Henry, like he was trying to put together a puzzle. Henry tried not to visibly squirm under Lucas’ inspection, but it was terribly exposing to have him already in possession of so much knowledge, even if it was the simple matter of Nora’s existence.

“Oh yeah,” Lucas said with authoritative gravitas. “You got your ‘thank god we’re both alive’ hugs, and your cocktail party ‘love what you’ve done with the place’ hugs, and the ‘I hate you so much I love you’ villain hugs, and—“

“Stop, please,” Henry said, holding up his hands to stop the tirade of nonsense. He’d never been a cinema or television fan, even as a child, and half the things Lucas said made no sense to him. “Suffice it to say it’s complicated.”

“So who is she?”

“Nobody, now,” he said quietly. His head swim again. He was so damned tired, it was hard to know _what_ he felt, exactly.

“Aw c’mon, you can’t leave it there.” Lucas snapped his fingers and brightened. “Oh, let me guess! Your polo championship arch-rival.” At Henry’s silent confusion and lack of response, Lucas shook his head. “No, no, too easy. Ooh—she stood as your second in a duel!” He checked Henry’s face again, then scoffed, rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling as he made a show of thinking. Henry, flabbergasted, said nothing, and then Lucas clapped his hands and pointed at him. “Chemistry lab partner?”

The comment stabbed through the present, straight through the past seven chaotic years to that furiously haunting day where this had all started; a silly kiss that he should have rejected with a punch in the nose, and instead had seen him clinging to Lewis like his brain were no more than a vestigial organ placed in his body as a poorly installed afterthought.

He knew that he was always going to be the person he was, that Lewis hadn’t done a thing other than make him face the truth, but damned if he hadn’t lain awake many a night cursing him as though everything that happened afterwards was his fault.

Lewis robbed him of his naiveté, Nora robbed him of his heart, and he was left with nothing.

Henry stood from his seat, ears ringing and mind going blank. To hell with this charade.

“Henry, easy, man, easy. I’m teasing, that’s all. Sorry, bad timing.”

Lucas was on his feet and around the table, and he put his hands on Henry’s shoulders. It was remarkably steadying. He closed his eyes, wondering what had become of his self-control.

“I—I’m…” An apology was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t speak without losing it.

Lucas pulled him into a hug. It was unexpected, to be folded into such comfort, and for once there was none of Lucas’ awkward hesitation. He patted Henry’s back gently, with a gentle shushing noise like he was soothing a child. Henry tipped his head forward and rested his forehead against Lucas’ shoulder. The sense of safety was greater than his embarrassment, and so he didn’t pull away. No judgment, no analysis, merely comfort offered and accepted.

He wished everything could be this simple.

The soft tread of Abe’s footsteps came towards them, then the clink of mugs being set on the coffee table. The gentle spice of the tea hit him, and all he wanted was the comfort of his father’s study, a mug in his hand, and all of it to be a bad dream.

“I’ve got a few things to do downstairs,” Abe said quietly.

“See you,” Lucas said, and then his footsteps disappeared. Lucas released him, placing his hands again on Henry’s shoulders, expression worried. “Please, sit down. You don’t have to say anything, just relax for a bit, okay?”

Henry was so painfully tired that his shoulders were slumping under the weight of Lucas’ hands, and he let Lucas guide him back to sitting in the arm chair. Lucas picked up a mug of tea and pushed it into Henry’s hands. Henry took it, staring into its murky depths and seeing himself stare back in the surface reflection.

“She is—was—my…” _Girlfriend_ wasn’t the right word, and _friend_ wasn’t nearly enough to describe Nora. “She was everything, once.”

He looked up, and Lucas was watching him with a quiet stillness that was so unlike his twitching agitation, and without his usual flippancy. The seriousness and weight of his attention made Henry suddenly self-conscious and irritated with his own melancholy.

“You know how it is,” he said with a cold, sharp smile, waving his free hand with a flourish. “I was gay, she was straight, she took issue with that. Typical love story gone wrong.”

He meant it to drive Lucas off, to embarrass him with the blunt, direct truth and bitter sarcasm, but instead Lucas’ mouth rounded with an ‘oh’ of sudden understanding. He nodded instead with an empathetic frown. He picked up his own mug of tea and returned to the couch opposite Henry.

“Yeah, that’s a tough one.”

Henry rolled his eyes. Lucas made it seem that it was just another relationship that hadn’t worked, like Henry was some teen in the throes of dramatic heartbreak.

“It wasn’t some passing fancy. I’d have married her, if she’d have had me, even though we weren’t…even though I…”

Lucas was silent, not looking directly at him, and Henry felt like an idiot all over again. If he couldn’t make Nora understand, the one person who should have, why would Lucas? Henry’s heart had only fiction for company.

“It was impossible from the start. I was a fool to think what I felt was real.”

“Hey, come on now, that’s not true.” Lucas came out of his reverie and shook his head vehemently. “Hearts are complicated. Most movies, books, poetry, the whole shebang, are devoted to figuring love out, but most of us still don’t understand it. Just because it didn’t work out doesn’t mean you didn’t feel it.”

“Lucas, I appreciate the attempt, but…” He couldn’t finish the thought. He felt finished in all senses of the word. “I give up. I’m done.”

Lucas made an unhappy noise, and Henry closed his eyes. He was too tired to feel embarrassment, even though he should; airing his nihilistic distress, flopping like a melodramatic fainting heroine in Lucas’ sitting room. He should leave.

He would leave, as soon as he could find the energy.

“I used to be married,” Lucas blurted.

Henry lifted his head from the chair’s backrest to look at Lucas in surprise. Lucas was biting his lip, eyeing Henry uncertainly. The idea of Lucas as a married man was hard to grasp. He seemed far too childish, so careless and inwardly focused.

“Same kind of thing. We were,” he wrinkled up his nose in thought, as though trying to find the right words, spinning his hand in the air as though cycling through choices. “Uh, like that. Opposite teams.”

Henry snorted at the needlessly archaic phrasing. He stared vacantly at the mess of papers scattered atop the table between them, and Lucas hesitantly continued, stumbling his way awkwardly into what Henry assumed was his attempts at consolation.

“She was the old fashioned type, sanctity of marriage vows and stuff, so there wasn’t anyone else, even though we weren’t…y’know. I always thought she’d leave because I wasn’t enough for her. I know she got lonely sometimes, and jeez, I never put any limits on her, but she made her choice. That worry was always there, though, because…” He paused, then lifted his hand to indicate towards Henry. “Because it doesn’t always work. It’s gotta take the right two people.”

“Are you going somewhere with this, Lucas?” Henry asked wearily. “Because I’m not certain this is making me feel better.”

Lucas winced and scratched his head.

“God, she was so much better at this,” Lucas muttered to himself before trying again. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not like it’s anyone’s _fault_ if it doesn’t work out. Sometimes life takes you where it takes you, no matter what you thought was going to happen.” He shrugged. “Sometimes you end up on the forest path and you gotta see where it goes.”

The familiar phrase made Henry’s senses fire up into abrupt overdrive, connections flashing brightly, so bright that it was as though a map had been drawn across his vision. At the same moment, his gaze focused to a fine point as he spotted the corner of the paperback novel Lucas had been reading amongst the messy pile of papers. A familiar dark green mottled with streaks of rust. He reached forward and pushed aside the newspaper, exposing the cover.

“Oh… That was a gift. Super silly stuff. Nothing important.” Lucas moved to cover it again, but Henry leaned forward and picked up the book.

_Bertie at War: The Lost Years of Bertie Bruce._

Henry Morgan, with only fiction for company—and those who pretended, just like him.

He raised an eyebrow as he looked up at Lucas, his vision gone red, all his curiosity and confusion of the past few days hardening into bitter, obvious revelation.

“Where is she now, this wife of yours?” He gestured with the book towards Lucas’ left hand. “You don’t wear a ring. There’s no tan line, no indentation, so you haven’t worn one for a long time.”

Lucas looked at his own hand as though it had surprised him with it’s existence.

“Oh, yeah. She, uh, she passed away a while ago.”

“Mm. My condolences. What was her name?” Lucas said nothing, but glanced at the book in Henry’s hands. Henry leaned forward and put the book on the table between them, hand atop it. “Lucas, what was her name?”

“It’s—she was…”

Lucas stared at him for what felt like an eternity, pale, mouth hanging open. He drew several gulping breaths, then drew a hand over his mouth, wiping away a sheen of sweat that had collected on his upper lip. He made a strange sound that could have only charitably called a laugh.

“You know what? Totally not important,” he said with a fake smile. “Anyway, I was—“

“‘Not important.’” He wrapped the words in a blanket of scorn, interrupting Lucas. “Married to her, the platonic love of your life. Died, and yet not important.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t suppose she was a nurse?”

Lucas started to stutter wordlessly. Henry shoved the book towards Lucas and stood, tired of Lucas’ bizarre game.

“I don’t suppose her name was Abigail?”

Lucas stood as well, hands up in a placating, defensive gesture.

“Henry, I can explain, it’s not—“

“Lucas, enough. You are not Bertie Bruce.”

Lucas, stunned, dropped his hands to his sides.

“What?” he croaked.

Henry pointed towards the book on the table top.

“Bertie Bruce. He is a _fictional character_. They’re books, made-up fantasy.” He put his fingers to his temples as his head swirled around, and he tried to grasp for some patience amongst his fury at being ridiculed like this, at the puerile part of him that had started to believe it all. “I don’t know if you think it’s amusing to claim all these experiences as your own personal understanding, or if you’re genuinely delusional, but stop it. I fail to see any humour in it. You may find comfort in fairy-tale happy endings, but I am afraid reality is not as sweet and lovely.”

He walked away, heading for his coat, and after a moment heard Lucas follow him.

“Henry, wait. I’m not mocking you, I swear.“

“You and Abe have been been very welcoming. You, all on your own, without the flourish, were the sort of person I thought I could call a friend. You could have left it at that without all this—this _fiction_.”

He straightened and faced Lucas. The exhaustion had hit him again, and he swayed on his feet. He held the bannister at the top of the stairs and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Henry,” Lucas tried again, but Henry lifted his head and held up his hand to forestall him.

“For better or for worse, we are who we are, Lucas. I accept the cards I am dealt, and the consequences that come with them. I suggest you learn to do the same.”

Lucas’ face was grey and drawn. He stayed put on the other side of the living room, silent.

Henry tossed his scarf around his neck and made his way downstairs. He put his head down and hurried past Abe without looking at him.

“Hey, Henry?” Abe called after him. “Wait, what’s up?”

“Sorry Abe, but I must be going. Give old _Bertie_ up there my best. Goodnight.”

His head ached fiercely and he wished he were home already. All he wanted to do was sleep. Henry fled the shop and didn’t look back, even when Abe called his name again.

He was good at that, not looking back.

 

***

 

“What happened?” Abe asked. “Did you tell him?”

Lucas was standing at the top of the stairs, one hand on his hip, the other on his head, like the teapot from the children’s song, frothing terror rather than steam. He hadn’t meant for it to go like that.

“No. I—I thought about it. I didn’t, but I said some stuff, and I guess he thought I was trying to…I don’t even know,” he said.

The opening had been there, and he’d thought maybe just once, he should take the risk. Henry was right there at the door already. Instead, he’d panicked and backpedalled as fast as his mouth would take him. Good thing, too, given where Henry had run with it.

Why did he say anything at all? Why did he feel the need to reassure him? Was Henry going to feel better knowing that Lucas, some random guy with an immortality problem, was the person who understood what he felt? He should have left well enough alone, because now look where they were.

“Well, bright side is that Henry thinks I’m just crazy, which is—”

“Not good.” Abe shook his head. “It’s not good, Luke.”

“He’ll leave me alone, now.”

“I think by the way he ran out of here it’s a little more than just writing you off as crazy. You should go fix it.”

“How’m I supposed to fix it? He’s got a lot going on in his life, and I don’t know jack about that stuff. Abigail was always the one who was good at those things.” Abe folded his arms and harumphed unhappily, but didn’t argue that point, and so Lucas continued. “Besides, how would telling him about me fix anything? This is nothing to do with me.” Lucas shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Being immortal isn’t something I need to share with him. Why should I lay that on him? It’s just more garbage to hang onto, one more thing to put up with.”

Lucas should remember that. Even if maybe, just maybe, he’d wanted to tell Henry, just a little bit…it was best not too. It was best it was like this.

“You’re thinking he’s going to treat it like a burden. It isn’t one.”

“Sure it is. It comes with secrecy, and lies, and all kinds of shady stuff for anyone who knows. How many times have you lied for me, Abe? Had to lie about your own life, what you’d been doing, who you’d been with, what you knew? You thought you should have lied about your own mom, just to protect me.”

“Come on, that’s not the same.“

“Sure it is. You, Abigail, you’ve kept more secrets for me than I can count, because you’re good people. Henry, you’re right, he’s not a bad guy. If he ever believed me, he might be good about it, sure. He doesn’t need to know, though. All the weird stuff he was thinking has a reasonable answer now—he thinks I’m a liar and completely nuts. End of story.”

“I can’t see how him thinking you’ve been jerking him around is better. He could use a real friend.” Abe gave him a meaningful look over the frames of his glasses. “He’s not the only one.”

“A few hurt feelings are way better than any of the alternatives.”

Abe shook his head, and with a sigh, he turned away.

“Fine. Good luck with that, Lucas. I hope someday you rejoin real life before you forget how. G’night.”

He stomped down the hall, obviously furious, and Lucas tried not to let the words linger, but they stung like alcohol on an open wound.

Henry Morgan was a closed chapter, even before the chapter had been read. He should be grateful. An unpleasant end, but a necessary one.

All stories don’t have happy endings, after all.

 

***

 

 

> **_Chapter 16_ **
> 
> _Bertie took up working in a newspaper kiosk when we arrived in New York in the early fall of 1945. Even though it meant dawn hours, he loved it because he was the first person to get to read all the newest columns, stories, and comics that he loved so dearly. I found work at the New York Presbyterian. It was shift work, with long and often unpredictable hours, and years passed unchecked as our little family fell into a rhythm of unmatched hours, cobbling together what little time we could, sometimes with nothing more than a brief hello and goodbye as we passed each other in the doorway._
> 
> _My colleagues were interesting, many of them from different countries, come to New York after the war just as I had, in search of a new life. The enthusiasm and hope that infused everything in those days was nearly too heady to be believed. We all worked hard, driving ourselves forward, as though we would run out of time to enjoy this bright and wonderful world we’d found ourselves in. I ran myself ragged in those years._
> 
> _In the fall of 1951, Abraham finally started school. Bertie and I walked him there the first day. Bertie was pleased as punch to see our little boy march himself proudly up to the gathering place for his class to meet before entering the school. He never lacked for confidence, that child, already making friends with the quiet boy standing next to him by the time their group went inside._
> 
> _Abraham in school meant a little breathing room from the frantic pace of life, but it still seemed like a whirlwind. I had a rare weekend off in early October, and unbeknownst to me, Bertie arranged for a neighbour to watch Abraham, and planned an evening out for us._
> 
> _He surprised me with a bouquet of flowers and reservations for dinner, to be followed by a night of dancing at the Roseland Ballroom._
> 
> _“You need a night off,” Bertie said. “And it’s the classics tonight—they’ve got a big band playing. I can finally teach you to swing properly.”_
> 
> _I laughed and thanked him, and kissed him on the cheek._
> 
> _“Thank you, Bertie. It’s just what I need. Give me a bit to get ready, I’ll be right there.”_
> 
> _Bertie always looked forward, had a way of keeping us from falling into the human failing of letting the past hold more sway than the present. He was quick to leap on any fad, any bandwagon, and I’d already lost count of the number of odd little hobbies and activities he’d launched himself into in just the six short years we’d known each other. To catch him in the mood to relive his past hobbies was a rare treat._
> 
> _He had two left feet, though, and the dancing was far more fumbling and crashing into each other, laughing until our bellies hurt, than it was a graceful affair. I’d not have traded it for anything. By the end of the night my cheeks hurt from smiling as much as my toes hurt from being stepped on, and Bertie was grinning ear to ear. It was a sight that made my heart sore, because I did not see it often enough, so busy had I been with Abraham, my job, falling into bed exhausted at the end of each night while Bertie kept ticking away at his own activities. Sometimes only a single shared meal once a week reminded us that we lived together._
> 
> _How quickly life passed by, how rarely I lifted my head up from our daily responsibilities, to appreciate our life as it was now._
> 
> _At the end of the night, exhausted from our fun, I rested my head against Bertie’s chest and relaxed against him during a slow waltz. He was tall enough that I didn’t even reach his shoulder. His suit jacket, a new one he’d bought for tonight, still smelled of the shop._
> 
> _Bertie sighed, and there was a wistfulness to it that made me look up. He was looking around us with an odd frown on his face, slowly scanning the crowd of couples dancing. So many people lost in their own little bubbles of contentment as they, like us, enjoyed the company of their partners._
> 
> _“What’s wrong?” I asked._
> 
> _It startled him from his thoughts, and he gave a guilty little smile and shook his head, but said nothing. He only tightened his arms around me in a hug and kept dancing._
> 
> _Bertie was in constant motion, in a constant state of thought and wonder. Even after nearly two centuries, he had a joyful craving for life that only Abraham in his childish enthusiasm seemed capable of matching. I couldn’t imagine what could be troubling him on such a perfect night._
> 
> _I only had to wait him out, however, because a quiet Bertie Bruce was a truly unnatural thing. He heaved a put-upon sigh and rolled his eyes before resigning himself to an answer._
> 
> _“I wonder, sometimes, if you’re happy.”_
> 
> _“Of course I am! What a thing to wonder, Bertie. I know I’ve been busy lately, but I am.”_
> 
> _“That’s not—I mean, not like that, not whether you enjoyed your week, or if you’re happy right now. I look at our life together, how it is with you and me, and I wonder sometimes…”_
> 
> _He looked around again, and this time I looked with him, to the sea of people in the ballroom. There was nearly a hundred couples in the ballroom, even though it was close to the last dance of the night. The big band had drawn a crowd mostly in their forties and fifties, ready to relive the music and dancing of their youth._
> 
> _Then I saw what he was looking at; happy couples, glowing with love, and amongst them, many kissing or murmuring to each other, sharing moments in a way that only dancing can allow, moments that spoke of an intimacy to come. It was something that we’d never shared, the two of us, had never been part of the love we felt. I never lacked for affection. I’d never felt the need to seek more, because I never felt that anything was missing._
> 
> _Maybe I’d only been thinking of myself._
> 
> _“Oh, Bertie,” I said, my heart sinking. “If you’re unhappy…”_
> 
> _“No! Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” He kissed me on the forehead. “No, I’m happier than I can ever remember being. I promise. I only wish I could give you more. I shouldn’t keep standing in the way. I should let you find everything you deserve, not make you put up with half a husband.”_
> 
> _“You are not half of anything, Bertie. Don’t you dare say that.”_
> 
> _I pulled him outside the dance hall, and we stood in the night air. Bertie tutted at me as the cool made me shiver after the heady heat of the ballroom._
> 
> _“Hon, you’ll catch a chill,” he said as he took off his coat and draped it over my shoulders._
> 
> _“See?” I said, holding the coat close. “Bertie you show me love and care in every single moment of every day. I’m not stuck, I’m not making do. I love you.”_
> 
> _Bertie kicked a foot at the ground like a chastened child, then smiled at me._
> 
> _“You’re something special. You know, that, right?”_
> 
> _Without warning he swept me into his arms and picked me up in a hug that cracked my back as he spun me around. It startled me enough that I screamed, then laughed with him. He was full of so much playful affection, darling Bertie._
> 
> _“I think we can make it work,” I said to him when he put me down. “Let’s not worry too much about how we think it should be, or I fear we’ll stop enjoying what we do have.”_
> 
> _Bertie kissed me on the lips with great affection, and he winked at me._
> 
> _“Whadya think, one more dance before we call it a night?” he asked._
> 
> _“Absolutely,” I agreed, and we returned to the ballroom in time to catch the last dance._
> 
> _After that night, we never questioned each other again on the matter. Though it was a choice we made every day, it was always the right one for us._


	12. Life Ain't Fair, Kid

Henry woke the next morning with a sore head, nearly as tired as he’d been falling asleep. Immediately the events of the last day flashed to the forefront, as though they’d been laying in wait, ready to attack him as soon as he was conscious.

Nora. Lucas. What a series of disasters.

“You’re a twat, Henry Morgan,” he said aloud.

The cardboard-thin walls of his silent apartment absorbed the words. Six in the morning was virtually the only time this building was quiet. For once he’d be glad to hear his neighbours stomping around above him, if only to have anything else at all to think about.

Instead his thoughts fell to the end of his evening, the confusing revelation of Lucas’ delusions. Personality traits, snippets of stories and experiences, even borrowed expressions and phrases. Lucas might well have known the author of the _Bertie Bruce_ books, Abigail Wahl, might have met her when he was a child, might have been a relative of hers, but it was hardy relevant.

Claiming her as his wife? Relating stories as thought they were his to give? None of it was true. Henry was disappointed in himself for falling for it. He’d fallen for Lucas’ supposedly honest quirky charm. To think, Henry thought he’d been holding the power in that equation. After all these years, was he really still so naíve?

 _What does Lucas Wahl matter to you?_ he thought irritably.

He _did_ matter. All of Lucas’ ham-fisted yet seemingly genuine attempts at friendship and hospitality had cracked through the protection Henry had carefully constructed to keep himself removed from the complications of relationships. Abe, with his kindness and good humour, had lent an air of legitimacy to the friendship he’d been extended. He’d felt moments of belonging. He’d let down his guard.

It had left him all the more vulnerable when Nora had returned out of the blue, sending him bouncing back towards them and supposed safety, only to find out that _none of it was real_.

Was it a joke at his expense? Carefully tailored responses, as though Lucas were an oracle of conveniently relevant life-advice? Borrowed experiences to engender false empathy with Henry, to sidle closer to Henry on the backs of lies, for…for what? What purpose could it serve, other than to manipulate Henry, or maybe the entire world, into seeing Lucas as something he was not? To use that to coax the story of Nora from him? To think that Lucas empathized with his situation, that he could _understand_ …

By now, he should have learned better than to take anyone at face value. Whether by design or not, no one was ever quite as they seemed.

Henry heaved himself out of bed and went into the tiny living room. He scooped up the copy of _The Lost Years_ from where he’d left it sprawled on the floor the night before. He threw it in the kitchen garbage. These books had brought him nothing but strange dreams, bad memories, and false futures. He was done with them.

His research needed his undivided attention. He could work longer hours continuously now that he had unlimited access to the lab, thanks to Lucas giving him a key, and he could finish his project early. His goal had been 8,500 samples processed in his time here, but with an extra three hours a day in the lab, he might be able to meet that number a full two months early. He could return to Oxford in time for an earlier semester, move on to analysis in order to write up his final thesis report, and continue on to the residency requirements for the MD/PhD program.

It was a goal that was possible, if lofty. He’d likely burn out with that schedule, but he didn’t care. New York had lost its shine, and he just wanted to move on. It had been his way since leaving home that last holiday; find a new project, find a new place, move on.

Time to move forward in the real world, and leave childish fiction behind.

 

***

 

Lucas was a fast typist, which was a mercy because his hand-written scrawl was an abomination. However, getting a report done quickly required having anything to write, or any concentration to write with.

He had neither, and the autopsy report for the morning’s body was woefully underwritten. He groaned and leaned forward, one arm flung out ahead of him until he was half-lying on his side in a forlorn slump on his desktop, face resting on his arm as he stared at his computer, willing the work to do itself. Regrettably, it was not cooperating with his desires.

The blinds along the glass wall separating his office from the morgue were open, displaying for him the scene of daily routine ticking along like he was watching a medical drama on television. Scrubs-decked technicians and assistant medical examiners buzzed about processing samples of trace evidence, tagging items, bagging the body bound for the fridge, and signing for the new bodies entering.

In the corner, in his island of isolated calm, with a glassy cool that was driving people people ten feet away from him on all sides, Henry was face-down in his microscope cataloguing away. He’d been there when Lucas had come in, and hadn’t so much as looked up from his work once all day.

Not that Lucas was watching, or obsessing, or anything like that. He certainly wasn’t moping.

With another unhappy grumble and a yawn he hauled himself upright, rubbed his eyes, and refocused himself on his scrawled notes. Staring at Henry like a creeper wasn’t going to get anything done.

He’d been stamped and catalogued as properly insane before, and that was a frightening experience he didn’t want to ever repeat. Every word from his mouth had been suspect. They’d tried to replace not just his words, but his thoughts with their own. He was loath to revisit the memories ever again.

He was sure Henry didn’t think he was clinically insane, just a harmless lunatic. Lucas was sure a lot of people over the years had thought him a loon, and better a harmless one than the kind that got stuck in a padded cell.

Even Abigail, with her tolerance of him and his eccentricities, had thought him a little bit crazy. She called him “an individual,” with a particular tilted smile that made the term mean a thousand things more than those words alone. Fair enough, a guy got weird over the years. Everyone did, but he’d had more time than average to cultivate it.

In spite of that weirdness, Henry had spoken to him with a respect and interest that Lucas hadn’t experienced from anyone in a long time. He’d acted as though Lucas might be a person that one could get to know, rather than inquiring no further than Lucas’ unasked-for commentary, usually interjected by force into the conversations around him.

Lucas had gotten used to being seen, to being a person with an actual face and a name, a real person instead of just a background player. That was ruined now. Henry had made his thoughts quite clear.

Of all the responses he expected from Henry, disappointment wasn’t one of them.

“Knock knock.”

Lucas looked up from his computer, startled by the voice. Jo Martinez had poked her head through his glass door.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said.

“No! No, I was just… uh, nothing. I was doing nothing. I mean, something—obviously, but not anything that can’t be stopped. Interrupted—I mean interrupted. Not that you’re interrupting!” Lucas leapt from his chair, requiring physical action to stop his mouth from flapping. “I mean, what’s up, Detective?”

He meant the last to sound casual, but he ended up sounding like Bugs Bunny. Whenever he was caught off-guard he utterly failed at casual. He got flustered too easily under pressure, and right now anything and everything felt like pressure. Too much pressure, high pressure, under pressure…and then the bass line riff from _Under Pressure_ started up like a little thundering background rumble in his mind. He fidgeted on his feet, grimacing. Yeah, he was a little too wound up right now.

He shook his head and tried to drop his shoulders and relax, because Detective Martinez was looking at him like she thought maybe she should back out of the office quietly and pretend she’d never come.

“It’s fine, sorry. A little preoccupied today is all.”

“Ah,” she said, and pushed the door open further. “Is it alright if I come in? I was hoping for an update on the boat murder case.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He offered her a seat in the chair opposite his desk, a cosy overstuffed armchair of a faded burnt orange. He’d had it since the sixties, and it had been in the corner of Abigail’s office for a long time. He’d holed up in that chair and read while she worked on her writing, or sewing, or whatever other project she had on the go—she was always busy, keeping her hands occupied.

Martinez dropped into the chair with a relieved sigh, apparently exhausted, but she quickly gathered herself and sat upright.

“I was hoping you might have some more information on our vic,” she said. “We’re running into a dead end upstairs.”

“Oh… Uh, yeah, the boat murder.” Lucas called up the file on his computer. “Right, yeah, this one.” He smiled, looking up at her, realizing what she’d said. “Hah—‘dead’ end. Nice one, Detective. I see what you did there.”

She gave him a blank look, and then winced.

“No, I didn’t do that on purpose, uh… No.”

“Well hey, you’re a natural, then! We all have our talents.”

She shifted in her chair, glancing over her shoulder like she wanted to make a run for it. She spotted something and turned around further.

“Oh, hey, is that the wonder kid who came with you the other day? Henry Morgan, right?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

As though hearing his name spoken, Henry glanced up from his work and looked directly at them. Lucas suspected he’d seen Jo come in and was curious, which was fair enough, given how keen he’d been on the case. He’d been energized and amped up afterwards, and all that research and those charts…

“I should probably include him, since we’re as far as we are thanks to him,” Jo said to Lucas, and she waved a hand to beckon him over.

Henry cocked his head, curious, and then put down the slides in his hands and stripped off his gloved to go wash up. Jo twisted in her seat back to Lucas, and then frowned.

“I hope that’s okay?”

Lucas realized he’d been clutching his pen like a defensive weapon, and he laughed weakly and put it down on the desk. It’s not like he was avoiding Henry, or about to challenge him to a pen fight. He needed to chill out.

“Sure, of course. No problem.”

A minute later, Henry politely knocked on the glass door and came in.

“Hello Detective Martinez, Dr. Wahl,” he said, nodding to each of them in turn. He clasped his hands together in front of him, standing at painfully polite attention. “What can I do for you?”

“Dr. Wahl passed on all that information you got together. It was pretty helpful, thank you. We’ve found three vessels in the vicinity you identified that night. One was a fishing trawler that was coming in for some repairs, so they’re pretty unlikely, but the other two were yachts that were out from ports here in the city. We’ve got twelve suspects to take a look through. That’s better than the zero we had before. Thanks for putting in all that work.”

Henry’s posture loosened. He beamed brightly at her and Lucas, tension gone in his moment of excitement.

“Well, that’s excellent! All that’s left is determining who had access to the poison, then.”

“Yeah, we’ll get there eventually,” she said. “Not always quite so straight-forward. Building a case takes time, but this is certainly a big step. Just thought you’d like to know.”

“Indeed, but with the forensic evidence of the poison, surely it’s only a matter of who had access and knowledge enough to commit the murder.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of why I’m here,” she said, looking back to Lucas. “We’ve got twelve names for the interview lists, but I’m losing staff hours by the day for this case. I was hoping to narrow down the suspect list, see if we had an ID on the poison so I can take a look at suspect files and backgrounds, see if someone’s a more likely match for our killer.”

Lucas scanned over the file on his laptop and shook his head.

“I’m really sorry, I don’t have it. I’ve put the request in with toxicology, and I haven’t heard back yet.”

“What?” Henry blurted. “What do you mean? It’s been days!”

“I know, I know,” Lucas said, holding his hands up. “It’s a pain in the butt.”

“Any chance you can put some pressure on for it to go a little faster?” Martinez asked, her tone hopeful.

 _Under Pressure_ , which had finally been fading, roared back to life as the unasked-for soundtrack to their conversation.

“It’s like talking to a wall every time you call or email. The city cut back the lab hours by an hour a day two months ago, and it’s been backing up since then. It’s going to be two weeks at least, and realistically, could be longer.”

The detective sighed with the familiar glum irritation Lucas witnessed from most of the detectives waiting on the evidence results.

“Figured you would say that, but I had to try. I was hoping to have this one squared away before maternity leave.”

Henry gaped at him and then at Detective Martinez.

“What about the suspects? And what about the quality of the samples, surely they degrade over time? And alibis, those can be fabricated given more time to prepare!”

She leaned on the armrest of the chair, her expression gentle and kind.

“Hey, Henry, we know. Trust me, it’s my least favourite part of this job. Sometimes it’s down to stupid logistics, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. You keep at it though, build your case brick by brick, but truth is some of these cases don’t ever get solved.”

“Doesn’t seem like mat leave is knocking down your door just yet,” Lucas said, trying to find a positive spin. “I mean, you’ve got that happy pregnant lady glow and all, but you’re…” He waved a hand at her lack of belly and still-slim figure.

She gave him a raised eyebrow and half a smile.

“Thanks, I think. But, I’ve had a bunch of cases stick around unsolved lately, and it’s starting to drive me a little nuts. I just want one put to bed nice and tidy in the next few months, you know?” She sighed, her mouth pinched in frustration, and then she seemed to realize she was venting to Lucas. “I—yeah, anyway, sorry to bother you. Thanks, Dr. Wahl. I appreciate your time.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

She left the office. Henry, who was fairly vibrating with indignation, started pacing his office.

“You can’t possibly tell me that’s all there is to it,” he said as soon as the door fell closed. “Backed up lab work, and an entire murder investigation is brought to a standstill? A murderer may well go free for lack of timely evidence testing?”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Henry.” Lucas leaned back in his chair as Henry stalked around his office.

Henry swivelled and approached his desk, planted his hands on it, leaning towards Lucas.

“Give me the samples. I can run them.”

“I do that, it’s going to be labeled as evidence tampering. None of it will be admissible in court. I know you want to get answers, but some rules can’t be bent quite that far.”

Henry straightened with a huffed as he searched for an answer and found none.

“So that’s it, then? Nothing happens?”

“Not nothing, we’ll get there eventually. It’ll just take more time.”

“More time, which will effectively destroy the best chance of a swift and accurate answer to who is the killer.”

“Possibly.” Lucas stood up from the desk and sat on the corner of it facing Henry. “I know it’s lame. The movies always make it seem so simple, but in reality, it’s not. I’m sorry, Henry.”

Henry smiled tightly.

“Don’t worry, I’m becoming quite accustomed to nothing being as I expected. I have no idea why this should be any different.”

It was an obvious stinging rebuke, but what tweaked his conscience was the complete defeat in Henry’s tone. Briefly, his expression crumpled, eyes dull and lifeless.

“You okay?” Lucas asked hesitantly.

Henry drew a deep breath and straightened up.

“Yes, quite. Thank you for the opportunity to be involved in the case. A most educational experience,” he said, crystalline manners flawless and perfect. He nodded, even had a flashing grin at the ready.

He’d watched Henry sit end-of-the-night-sad-drunk in his living room last night, watched him storm out of the house as any trust or burgeoning friendship between them popped like a balloon. He’d seen Henry’s passionate frustration, and now…it was like it had never happened. Lucas would never have known he’d ever distressed at all if he hadn’t seen those moments.

Henry’s mouth twitched at one corner when Lucas didn’t answer, and he turned to quickly leave the office.

Lucas returned to his desk and ostensibly to his work, but instead couldn’t shake off the feeling of responsibility for that dead look in Henry’s eyes.

Lucas understood the feeling—he’d been through a few moments like that over the centuries. Moments that lasted decades, more like, but Lucas could afford the time wasted on melancholy and surrender. Henry, painfully mortal and aging with every day, losing moments to the relentless march of time, couldn’t. He was too young to be done with hope and give up on the possibilities in life.

Henry’s past was already said and done—his baggage with his father and with this Nora girl were outside Lucas’ ability to do anything. He thought Lucas was a nutcase who believed he was an imaginary character, and was using that to manipulate his way into Henry’s life. That wasn’t great, but it was better than the truth, so he couldn’t do anything about that either.

Evidence testing and poison identification, though? He could do something about that.

Lucas set about planning. If he could do anything before Henry left, he could show him that the world wasn’t _completely_ hopeless.

Abigail had done it for him, once. Maybe he could pay the favour forward to Henry.

 

***

 

Henry slammed the door to his apartment closed, which caused a shout and stomping from the apartment above. He made a rude gesture at the ceiling before throwing his bag down on his chair.

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. There was no point in letting himself get upset—he’d spent years trying to forget all the complications of home, he couldn’t expect himself to manage to reset himself all in one day. Seeing Nora had had a devastating effect on his self-control. He thought he was over her, but instead it was as though he’d never grown beyond that teenager who was so afraid of losing everything he had.

He _had_ lost everything. It wasn’t fear, it was prescience. His friend, his father, his comfortable life in England. Even this new place where he’d come for a fresh start was a joke. Why had he bothered to open himself up at all? Why had he started to care again?

He shouldn’t care. He wanted to be a person who didn’t care.

He was better off calling Saul, the man from the club, than seeking out friends. He’d had more honesty in that one night of meaningless sex than he’d had in months of talking with Lucas.

He considered going out to the clubs just to distract himself, but he was in no mood to socialize, even the easy anonymity of first-and-only meetings. He went to have a shower with the thought that he might change his mind, dressing himself and carefully styling his hair afterwards, but he still did not feel like it.

He scowled at his gaunt reflection in the mirror. He was too worked up to sleep, too surly to seek out company, and too frustrated to stay home without a better distraction than the stack of paperwork waiting for him.

He went into the kitchen to put tea on, rattling the cupboards as he fetched cup, teabags, spoons, slamming drawers. He knew he was being unreasonable and behaving like a child, but he had no energy left with which to moderate himself. He didn’t lose his temper easily, but when he properly lost it he was ill-equipped to calm himself.

The kettle whistled and the dog next door took up the call, his yapping barks turning into an endless howling cry that carried on long after Henry took the kettle off the stove. The little thing yodeled away as though it could call back through the ages to its undomesticated ancestors and summon the pack.

From above, more stomping, and then a staggeringly loud thump that set one of the tacky garage-sale paintings on Henry’s kitchen wall bouncing.

Henry closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the kitchen cabinet door with a pained groan. Oh, for some _peace_. He wished he could go back to work and keep working through the night, just keep processing slides and lose himself in the mindless repetition.

He was about to shrug out of his jacket and sit down with his tea when it occurred to him that he _could_ go to work if he wanted. Lucas had given him a key, and that meant unrestricted access.

Though not typical and perhaps not very professional, there was technically nothing wrong with him accessing and using the morgue in the middle of the night. Lucas would be gone by now—his unusual late hours wouldn’t stretch this long past his typical departure time.

He looked at the clock. He’d managed to kill several hours stalking around his house sulking. He could be back at work by eleven or twelve, perhaps working until two or three in the morning, and then go home for a quick sleep before being back at it again. He wasn’t going to sleep now, and he would do anything to just stop thinking.

Henry grabbed up his scarf and overcoat and left for the OCME, only to find that the morgue was not deserted as he’d expected.

Clenching his teeth with frustrated chagrin, he made his way to Lucas’ still occupied office to announce himself briefly, and then set to his mindless busywork.


	13. More Fact Than Fiction

They still had the body in the fridge, and Lucas drew another blood sample to take a look, even though the paperwork was all signed and technically the body was to remain undisturbed.

Unconventional, possibly a little illegal, but in the spirit of the law, right? Even by Abigail’s occasionally flexible definition of right and wrong, it was iffy at best. He was picking up all kinds of bad habits from Henry. If their roles were reversed, Henry would have been a lawyer’s worst nightmare.

It was only to get a little head start on what kind of poison to look for, he reminded himself. Not court evidence, but a little nudge to send the detectives in the right direction while the proper evidence came through. That would give them something to guide their interviews. He had more personal experience with poison than the average person thanks to an experimental period in the '80’s—1880’s—and this would be faster than running the lab tests himself.

Lucas waited out his staff signing off for the night, then a few more hours while Henry ran two extra batches of samples before leaving. Henry kept glancing up at Lucas’ office as though he were trying to wait Lucas out, but after a while he gave up and packed it in. Lucas waited a few more hours after that for good measure before calling Abe.

Abe, very predictably, was not impressed with his plan.

“Look, Abe, it’s not a big deal.  If you head down to the river now, you’ll have me out in a jiffy.  Three shakes of a lamb’s tail.  Lickety-split.”

 _“Luke, oh my god, stop.  Okay, okay.”_  

Abe sighed heavily into the phone and Lucas knew he had him.  There was a specific tone to Abe’s resigned huffing and puffing that had taken hold when he was five years old and learned to roll his eyes at his Uncle Luke’s antics. It hadn’t changed, even if the little boy had become an old man.

“Awesome.  I’ll give you fifteen?”

 _“Yeah, yeah, fine.  I can be there.”_  A pause, then, _“Can’t you wait for the tests or whatever to come back?”_

“I could,”  Lucas allowed, fiddling with the vial in his hands.  He wasn’t about to explain his real motivations to Abe. “But this’ll work too. Trust me. I gotta do it.”

_“Fine. I’ll bring a flashlight. Just go towards the light.”_

“I always try, but the light won’t have me,”  Lucas joked.  Abe’s silence dragged, and Lucas winced.  “Sorry.  Yeah, I’ll make it quick.  I’m a little tired of the drunk tank.”

_“Okay, meet you there.”_

Lucas hung up his cell and leaned back in his chair.  From the state of the corpse it wasn’t a particularly painful poison. No signs of major cramping or contortion aside from the average.  Shouldn’t take too long to sort out what it was once he had the onset style. The initial stages were revealing for what was coming up.  Didn’t seem like it had been instantaneous, since stomach contents revealed the poison was likely ingested and the food was partially digested. There had been time between the victim consuming their last meal and time of death.

Lucas injected himself with the tainted blood quickly before he changed his mind, drank down a bit of old coffee and settled back in his chair to wait. He drummed his fingers on the desk, and was about to grab a paper and pen for notes when he looked down at himself.

He had lost a lab coat earlier this month to a particularly messy autopsy, and he really didn’t want to order another already. He left the desk to hang up his lab coat, stripped off his ID, then emptied his pockets of anything important.  Keys, change, receipts.  Oh, hell, might as well leave his shoes here too.  He liked these tennis shoes, they were springy.

Lucas sat in his seat and bent to untie his shoe.  He swayed as he did—he was starting to get woozy.  He soldiered through untying his shoes, but found it an increasingly difficult task.  Less than two minutes and already taking effect. It was moving a lot faster than he’d expected. Maybe he should have eaten beforehand? Lower blood sugar might change—

“Dr. Wahl?”

The voice startled him so much that he jumped and banged his head on the underside of his desk.

“Son of a bitch!” he squawked, grasping at his head and popping up.  

In his doorway, wide-eyed and dressed to tailored perfection, was Henry.

It was nearly midnight and he looked _immaculate_.  How the hell did he manage that? Did he keep a travel iron in that leather bag of his?  Did he sneak off and press his trousers every few hours to make sure they stayed perfectly creased all day?

Lucas blinked. He was zoned out, staring at Henry, mind wandering. Henry was staring back with keen, curious eyes, starkly lit by the lights in Lucas’ office with the darkened backdrop of the empty morgue behind him.

Dark. Empty. Wait…

Lucas looked at the clock on his desk. It _was_ nearly midnight. Henry shouldn’t be here.

“How’d you get in?”

“You gave me a key.”

So he had. That hadn’t been very smart, had it? Why hadn’t he thought about that before he chose to do this here? He should have poisoned himself at home like a smart immortal.

“Okay, but _what_ are you doing here?” he demanded, straightening up in his seat.  “It’s late.  Morgue is closed.”

“I…I couldn’t sleep. I came back to work. I saw you in here, thought it best announce myself given the unusual hour.” Henry took a cautious step into Lucas’ office. “Are you drunk?”

Henry looked stumped for what to do. Now there was a sight.  Henry Morgan, at a proper loss for words.  He’d have poisoned himself earlier to see that.  

Henry had a magical way of making Lucas feel like he’d been spun around and set loose to pin the tail on the donkey—but had been pointed out the door and was never going to get anywhere close to his destination. Lucas, eternally staggering blindly forward, while Henry always knew where he was headed. When Henry’s life went off the rails, he got out and shoved the train back on track with brute force and British manners.

Lucas wiggled his toes, then looked down to his stockinged feet.  He’d taken his shoes off.  Why?

Oh, right.  Poisoning himself. Disorientation, slight euphoria, dulled sensory input.  He should write these things down.  Where was his pen?  He scanned the desk in front of him, which was littered with the contents of his pockets.  No pen.  Had he forgotten to take out a pen and paper?  He really wasn’t on top of this.

“Dr. Wahl? Lucas?”

At the call, Lucas looked up.  Henry was leaning on the opposite side of his desk. It was just like earlier today when he’d been bouncing around Lucas’ office like an irate wrecking ball, but instead of angry demands he was issuing concerned demands. Henry’s eyebrows were extremely lively little creatures. They really moved when he was concerned.

Why was he concerned?

Oh, because Lucas probably looked like he had poisoned himself—which he had. Which he was only doing because of those concerned eyebrows and their propensity to turn into sad caterpillars when Henry moped about what a lying dick Lucas turned out to be.

Crap,” he blurted. He had to get Henry out of here. He leaned back in his chair and waved a hand, trying to look as casual as possible.  “I mean, I just remembered I head to have home.  Good.  Er, g’night, Henry.  Tomorrow.  See you.”

That didn’t help anything, because Lucas sounded like he’d downed a bottle of cheap tequila.  Henry broke from his position and moved around the desk towards Lucas, all long limbs and action and worry.  He took hold of Lucas by the shoulders and steadied him—oh, he was listing to the side.

“I’m fine,” he said, pushing Henry away.  “Go on, shoo.  Come back tomorrow.”

“Lucas, what happened?”

It was finally sinking in.  He was dying, and Henry, well-intentioned little thing that he was, figured he was going to play hero and save him. Lucas was going to have an audience. An audience of one, composed of the single most unwanted audience member in the history of audiences.

Lucas had completely fucked this up six ways from Sunday.

“Henry, go,” he tried to say, but it came out as a slurred, groaning sound.

He was going to have to leave New York, wasn’t he? Damn it, he _liked_ it here.  Not like he’d made friends or anything, but it was peaceful. Being Uncle Luke again to his little Abe—okay, not so little, but kids never really grow up, do they?—was great in ways that were hard to describe.  

And that collectibles shop on St. Mark’s, _The Berkowitz Bonanza,_ they were fantastic. He’d miss that place, they’d really improved their stock in the last thirty years. Sure, Abe had his little vendetta going with the brothers who owned the place, but Lucas still found it funny to sneak in there once in a while and bring home some treasure in their distinctive silver bags. The way Abe could curse when he got going, it brought a proud tear to Lucas’ eye. At least he’d managed to teach Abe something useful in life.

Lucas stared up at the ceiling.  He was on the floor.  Henry’s face flashed in his vision.

“Stay with me, Lucas.  I’ve called 911.  Hang on.”

Stilted speech, white-lipped fear.  Not very much like Henry Morgan at all.  Not at all the hard candy coating that Henry exuded, shaking off everything life threw at him with a smoothness that Lucas admired.

Lucas felt hands on his face.  Henry’s lips were moving, but he couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

This was such a waste.  He’d gotten distracted and not taken any notes.  Lucas had never been a stickler for precision, but this was a bit much, even for him. Henry had completely distracted him. He often did.

He really liked Henry, in all his grumpy, curmudgeonly, youthful glory.  Henry had used the word _friend_ in reference to him—past tense, but it’d been briefly there. They could have had some good adventures together, the two of them. Maybe in some alternate universe they already were. Henry was the kind of guy who was destined to grow up and star in his own adventures.  Lucas knew the type; Henry was a hero.  Maybe a quiet hero, slinging words and science as weapons, but that jawline?  Definitely the hero.  He’d have his stories to tell, and people would listen because people admired Henry.

They never even noticed Lucas.  That was a good thing, right?  He didn’t want them to notice. When had Lucas ever been the hero?

Only in Abigail’s eyes. She’d taken all his very best moments, all the events of his life, and shined them up until they gleamed like gold. She’d seen his aimless path and drawn a map to match it, like he’d had a reason and a purpose. She’d written him a story he could believe in. For a while, he had been Bertie, had lived life to his fullest, happiest best, in the never-ending story of real life.

That was Bertie, though. Lucas, he was a supporting character.  He slipped into the role so easily.

He was good at it, settling into it right away in Henry’s little dramatic life story—and what a dramatic story. Henry Morgan, heroic drama queen. Lucas had turned annoying Henry as a full-time sport, like any good sidekick should do. Eating in the morgue by Henry’s samples—always the fastest way to annoy him.  So much irritation over procedure being put to the wayside, even though he was the master of spotting and taking shortcuts.  Food in the morgue, though? What, was he going to die from it?  Hah.

“Lucas?  No—no, hang on—”

Oh, he _was_ going to die.

He was going to die because he wanted to make one thing go right in Henry’s life. This was probably going to have the opposite effect.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say, would have said if he could. If he could talk, breathe, move.

The very next thing: cold water, a gasped breath at the surface, and the flicker of a flashlight beam winking at him from shore.

Lucas started swimming.

Damn it.  Damn it to hell.

The one thing Lucas had perfected in his two hundred and thirty-five years was the ability to take a bad situation and make it infinitely worse.

 

***

 

Henry placed his hand on the dull grey carpet. Both hands, palms flat, just to be sure.  It was still warm from body heat.  

> _I stood and looked down at the rumpled bed.  I put my hand to it again.  Still warm._

He looked around Lucas’ office. Obviously Lucas wasn’t there.  He hadn’t gone to hide under his desk or behind the hideous armchair.  No, Lucas’ heartbeat had faded away as his body seized, and before Henry could so much as consider resuscitation of any kind, his body blinked out of existence.

> _…with the blink of an eye, Bertie disappeared, leaving my hand hanging in mid-air to drop heavily to the bed._

Henry hung his head and made a conscious effort to take slow, controlled breaths as he sat there on his hands and knees in the middle of Lucas’ empty office.

Henry wasn’t one to panic.  See a situation, deal with it—he had an agile mind that had always served him well on that front.  There weren’t many problems Henry faced that couldn’t be handled with logical reasoning and a quick tongue.

Having the head of the OCME morgue inexplicably die and disappear came high on the short list of things Henry was not equipped to deal with. How did he reasonably explain this?

> _Bertie had lived, died, and now lived again._

Oh, it was explicable, but reason had nothing to do with it.

Lucas had died, that much he was certain of.  He wasn’t certain of anything else.  He would have no answers for the 911 emergency team that was on its way.

Henry scrambled up and found his legs were shaking but were serviceable enough to get him out of the OCME.  On his way out of the building and as he was rounding the corner, an ambulance screamed past him.  He didn’t bother to flag it down.  There was nothing to tell that would make sense.

He left his overcoat behind, a fact which only hit him when he was three blocks from the precinct and running through the night air, the bracing chill cutting through his dress shirt and flapping his jacket behind him.

He headed to the only place that made any sense.  Abe would know, wouldn’t he? As far as Henry could tell, he was the only person who properly knew Lucas. When one’s friend has the ability to disappear in a puff of improbability, they likely know. If Abe didn’t, Henry was going to look like a raving madman. Henry didn’t give a damn if he did.

He was sprinting through Manhattan’s thinly populated midnight streets, breath a wheezing whine in his chest and tight throat, and he would not stop until he had an answer. He urged himself onward until his legs burned and his stomach was sore.

The little kitschy shop on the corner of Suffolk and Stanton was lit up, glowing on the street corner beneath the neon _Abe’s Collectibles_ sign, when its windows should have been dim in the middle of the night. Henry stumbled to a halt outside it, chest heaving as he gulped down deep breaths, trying not to vomit from the long run.

Through the windows he caught sight of not one, but two people in the store.  Lucas and Abe, deep in some discussion.  They were arguing, by the look of it.  Lucas was doing his usual routine, the one where his arms pinwheeled around, like when the detectives would challenge him and he would try to paint his thoughts on the air around him to explain his crazy theories.

That was beside the point.   _How_ he flailed around was not so important as the fact that he was here to do it in any form.

He’d died, vanished, and reappeared in his home. Lucas was _alive_.

Henry’s once-sharp mind had deserted him. Here he stood, separated by a thin sheet of glass from Lucas, a man whose heart had stopped beneath his hands, but it took a full minute before Henry managed to mobilize himself. He cleared his throat, rolled his shoulders and pulled himself up straight.  Feet on the ground, shoulders back.

He raised his fist to knock, but never completed the action. Lucas looked over towards the street and spotted Henry. He reared back with a wild panic, like a cornered animal.  He met Henry’s eye, and in that instant Henry knew that what he’d seen was real. Not fantasy, not madness, but reality.

Lucas bolted.  

Abe shouted something Henry couldn’t hear, then threw his hands in the air as Lucas disappeared around the corner into the back where the stairs were.  Abe turned and strode to the door, unlocked it, and yanked it open.  His irritation fell away as he gripped Henry by the shoulder, firm and secure.

“Hey, Henry.  You okay?”

“May I speak with Lucas, please?” When all else failed, manners. He was not yet recovered from his sprint, and he barely managed to spit it out in one breath.

Rather than answer, Abe pulled Henry into the shop and urged him into a chair.  

“You, stay put.”  Abe turned to go, but then stopped and shifted back to Henry, stooping down to eye level.  He put his hands to either side of Henry’s face. He had large hands that were comforting and warm.  “Lucas is fine, okay?  A complete dumbass, but a hundred percent fine.  Give me a minute, we’ll be right back.” Abe released Henry and hustled away.

Henry steepled his fingers and pressed them to his lips, then closed his eyes and tried to sort out his racing thoughts and catch his breath.  He had many questions and very few answers, but the questions were more like giant swimming question marks rather than anything articulate.  He was in a general state of seeking answers.

Where did he even begin?

_You know exactly where to begin._

The cover of that damned book flashed before him. No bland faces this time—it was Lucas in military dress, his arm around the beaming young face of Abigail Wahl, little Abraham held between them. Henry ground the heels of his palms into his eyes and grit his teeth tight.

> _I first met Bertie on a hellishly cold April night in Bergen, near the gates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp…_

Surely he was going mad.

“Henry.”

He jumped and his eyes flew open at the sound of his name.  Abe was facing him again.  Behind him, still in the doorway, unable to keep still on his feet, looking everywhere but Henry, was Lucas.  Lucas rubbed at the back of his neck, fidgeting continuously.

Henry got to his feet and levelled a finger at Lucas.

“You were dead. You died.”

“Yeah, I do that sometimes.”  Lucas rubbed his hands over his face and then he crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway.

“‘Sometimes,’” Henry repeated, taking a step towards them. “‘ _Sometimes_?”

Lucas’ hair was wet, but otherwise he seemed as normal as every day.  No pale and clammy skin, no disorientation.  Lucas tensed when Henry took another step closer, then swallowed hard when Abe shot him a dirty look.

“Look, Henry, I’m sorry you saw that. I didn’t think anyone was going to be around. I’m—“

“You disappeared. Your body vanished less than a second after you died, like that soldier, like…” He could barely think it, let alone say it out loud. He sputtered and stumbled on the words. “You’re—you _are_ Bertie Bruce. Bertie _bloody_ Bruce!”

“And there it is,” Abe said, setting his hands on his hips. “Here we go.”

“And you!” Henry swivelled and came near to poking Abe in the chest with his accusing finger.

“And me,” Abe said patiently.

“You’re Abraham, the baby.” Abe nodded, while Lucas exuded a guilty look of confirmation. Henry laughed despite himself. "This is mad. This is a joke. An elaborate ruse.” It was futile grasping at straws, even to his own ears.

Abe chuckled and patted Henry on the arm. He tipped his head towards the door.

“I’m going to head upstairs, let you guys talk.  Shout if you need me, or if he does anything else stupid.”

Abe’s words were lighthearted, but Henry could hear his concern. Abe gave Lucas a fierce glare on the way through the doorway before he was gone.

“Right, yes.  So, on to the small unresolved matter of you dying, disappearing, and then…”  Henry waved his hand up and down towards Lucas, “then reappearing hale and hearty, which you do ‘sometimes.’” Henry was itching to touch Lucas.  He’d felt Lucas go still under his hands, felt his pulse cease and his breath stop, and right now he needed to know that it wasn’t so. He balled his hands up at his side, willing himself to find control.

Lucas tipped his head back with an agonized groan and leaned against the door frame.

“I’m really sorry, Henry.  I didn’t think anyone was going to be in the morgue or I wouldn’t have done it.”

“You did it on purpose?  You die and disappear—what, for _fun_?”

“No!”  Lucas straightened, finally approaching Henry.  “No, it’s not fun.  Trust me.  But you get used to it after a while, and it has its uses.  Not the best superpower, dying at people, but you know, use what you’ve got.  If I can, say, figure out what kind of poison or drug killed someone, maybe get that information off to the detectives in a timely way and someone goes to jail for it rather than slipping away because of lab wait times, well then…that’s helpful, right?”

“You did this because of the lab delay?” Henry asked, incredulous.

“Yes? Sort of? I don’t know, you seemed… Aw hell, Henry, I can’t do anything about what’s eating you, but I was trying to make it a little better, maybe help get this case solved. Make one thing go right this week.”

The insanity of it all was building. Never mind that Lucas claimed death and rebirth—which Henry was hard-pressed to deny, having had it happen beneath his very nose—but for the most pedantic of reasons. Paperwork backlog. And… thoughtfulness? It was the strangest kind of thoughtfulness he could imagine.

“You died to _cheer me up_?”

“Yeah, I guess you could put it that way. See, I told you. It’s a really bad superpower.”

“‘ _Superpower_?’” Henry scoffed, throwing a hand up.  “You speak as though this were—one of your comic books!”

“They’re graphic—”

“I _know_ they’re bloody graphic novels!”  Henry bellowed.

Lucas lowered his head to glumly stare at his shoes. Henry covered his mouth with his hand, surprised at hearing the hysterical sound from his own mouth.  Henry lowered his hand and gulped a few breaths to calm himself.

“And now you’re fine?”

“I’m fine,” Lucas said, raising his head.  “Yeah, I’m totally fine, Henry.  It’s okay.”

“I shall make that decision for myself.  Sit.”  Henry stabbed a finger towards a chair.

Lucas looked curious, but didn’t ask.  He shuffled to the chair and dropped into it, his feet tapping nervously as Henry came up to him.

Henry approached him, and after wringing his hands once uncertainly, he pressed his fingers to Lucas’ neck, locating his pulse.  It was strong and steady.  Henry pulled his pocket watch from his pocket and counted off heartbeats.  A racing 97bpm, but definitely a much healthier rhythm than the stuttering, failing beat he’d felt before.  Henry tucked his watch away.

He sat on another chair opposite Lucas.

“You are Bertie, aren’t you. I stood here calling you a lunatic for weaving these tales into your life as though they were your own, and all the while, they were.”

“Trust me, I’ve been called worse.” Lucas tugged at one ear in a nervous twitch. He shrugged indifferently.

“And Abigail? She really was your wife?”

Lucas looked up at that. Her name seemed to drain him of the anxious energy. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and chin resting on his clasped hands.

“Yeah. We were married for fifty years the year she died. She was an amazing person.”

“None of it was a lie.”

“Nope.”

The mad theories that Henry’s subconscious had been belching out like volcanic ash to settle over his thoughts—they were all true.

“You died. You poisoned yourself, and you died.”

He restated the facts again, as though repetition might settle them into proper order and make them sensible. No such luck.

It had been at least two nights since Henry had slept more than a few hours, and longer since he’d had a proper rest. The constant state of frenetic emotion was too exhausting to keep up, and his mad dash through Manhattan had physically drained him. The tension was oozing out of him as the numb state of shock took over.

He saw himself from a distance, seated in this improbable store full of the scattered, forgotton flotsam of history, with a fictional, living relic seated before him. Older than his apparent age by triple, possibly more, if those damned books really did chronicle Lucas’ adventures. Henry could see himself slouching deeper into the chair, all the energy drained from him, gaze defocusing as logical thought ceased.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t care what was true and what was false. He only wanted to go to sleep and forget about it.

“I think,” he said slowly, and his voice sounded very far away. “I think I will go home now.”

Lucas said something that Henry didn’t catch, and stood. He left Henry’s field of vision. He couldn’t be bothered to turn his head to follow his path. Neither could he be bothered to execute his vague desire to be home in his bed. He stayed put, because it was infinitely easier.

Some time later, either minutes or hours, there was a tug under his arm.

“Come on, kid,” Abe said. “You’re burnt out. You can have a lie down upstairs. Lucas, get his other side.”

He roused himself enough to cooperate with their urgings and got to his feet, but they were like lead weights. He only wanted to go to sleep and close his eyes, and think about it all later. He let them shove him into motion.

They settled him on the couch, and Abe gave him a blanket. He said some form of thanks, and stretched out to stare at the ceiling.

In seconds, he was asleep.

 

***

 

Henry was unconscious on the couch. He’d fallen asleep almost as soon as his head hit the stuffed throw pillow, and Lucas and Abe stood next to him speaking in hushed voices.

“Poor kid,” Abe said. “Hell of a couple days he’s had.”

“What do we do now?” Lucas asked.

Henry was snoring softly. Now that he was finally still it was brutally apparent how sleeplessness and stress had taken a toll on him; dark shadows drew ugly lines beneath his eyes. Lucas wondered how he’d missed it when Henry had showed up at his office door tonight. Such was the impenetrable field that Henry gave off; he could make people see what he wanted them to see, a fiction of an all-together, sophisticated young man who could take anything.

He’d missed it because he was too busy worrying about himself. That, and dying. It put a guy off his observational game.

“We let him sleep. We talk in the morning. It’ll be okay. Like you said, Henry is a good guy. Could have been a little less dramatic than poisoning yourself in your office in front of him—“

“Hey, I didn’t know he was going to be there, I said that already!” Lucas protested.

“—But it’ll work itself out,” Abe continued. “Now, I’m going to bed and going to try and get some sleep while I can, because if the Late Night Henry Show is going to be a daily thing, I’m going to need all the rest I can get.”

“Yeah, okay. G’night.”

Abe took a few steps away and then stopped. He turned back towards Lucas.

“Are, ah, are you alright?”

Lucas was watching the rise and fall of Henry’s chest, here in the safe confines of their apartment. It was no war-torn landscape, no muddy hellhole. He wasn’t to be shot for desertion, only to be captured and found out all over again.

Nor was Abigail here to save him. He was on his own.

“Uncle Luke?”

He looked over at Abe, at his loving concern. No, not totally on his own. He could do this, it would be okay. Even if it wasn’t, he could figure it out. He wasn’t in a corner, he wasn’t locked up. He had options, no matter how this went.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said. He worked up a brief smile.

Abe nodded hesitantly in acknowledgement, and then turned to shuffle off to bed.

Lucas watched Henry sleeping for a moment longer, then left for bed as well. He’d try to sleep, if he could.

Who knew what the morning held? Nothing easy, that was for certain.

Maybe he’d dig up some old Superman and Batman comics, remind himself how they handled revealing their secret identities. A little research never hurt anyone.


	14. Q&A Session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally done editing! Last two chapters posting now!

Henry woke with a start, sitting bolt upright before his eyes were even fully open. It took five seconds before his brain woke up enough for him to recognize his surroundings.

He was in Lucas’ home, on the couch in his living room. A soft red wool blanket was wrapped around his legs, twisted up as he’d moved in his sleep. His jacket was draped over the back of the couch where he’d discarded it, but otherwise he was still in his suit from the day before. He hadn’t even bothered to loosen his tie when he’d collapsed here in complete exhaustion.

He tugged it loose now and unbuttoned his collar and waistcoat, then tugged his shirttails free of his trousers. He’d been malingering on their couch all night, it wasn’t as though his state of dress was going to make a difference now.

His shoes were still on. He quickly put his feet to the floor, hoping he hadn’t dirtied their couch cushions, and his back and legs screamed in protest. His sprint yesterday had left him stiff and cramped.

His shoes were on, which meant he could grab up his jacket and make a dash for it without disturbing anyone. Whether or not he could get out of the store without a key, or setting off an alarm, could be an issue, but—

“You’re up.”

He twisted around to find Abe in the kitchen perusing the morning newspaper.

“Oh. Good morning.”

His voice was rough with sleep. His head was pounding like he’d been on a bender all night, though it was only fatigue and emotion that had drained him so. He pried himself up off the couch and winced.

Abe pushed a plate of bread towards him and gestured to the toaster on the table.

“Help yourself.”

Gingerly, Henry seated himself opposite Abe, who made a show of rattling the newspaper and absorbing himself in an article. Henry put the toast in the toaster and pushed the lever down, and the click seemed painfully loud in the obvious silence of the apartment. He glanced around, but everything was dead still around them. The sky was a dark, murky blue outside, the weak morning light of winter sun just starting over the horizon.

“Lucas isn’t up yet.”

Abe had caught him looking, and knew exactly what he was looking for before Henry himself did.

“Doing alright this morning?”

“I’m honestly not sure yet,” Henry said with a half-smile. “It’s hard to know what to think.”

“Uncle Luke has that effect on people.”

Abe put the paper down and leaned forward, resting on one elbow and looking Henry directly in the eye. It was very deliberately said, and he let the statement hang between them while Henry swallowed against the thick cotton dryness of his mouth, unable to look away from Abe’s blue eyes. He said it so easily, as though he had a lifetime of practice.

The toast popped up and Henry started at the noise. He laughed weakly at his own expense, and Abe smiled at him.

“It’s okay. Take your time with it. It’s a lot to absorb.”

Henry plucked the hot toast from the toaster and began methodically buttering it, selecting an orange marmalade as a topping. Henry finished dressing the toast under Abe’s attention, but found he wasn’t particularly interested in eating it. Abe, who clearly knew that the questions were coming, was waiting patiently with his arms folded on the table.

“You… you know everything, then.”

“About Lucas? Yeah. He helped raised me, and between him and my mom’s stories, I know a lot about him. Not everything. He keeps a lot more to himself than I think I ever knew, but I’ve got the general idea.”

“He really is Bertie, then.”

“He used to tell Mom all kinds of stories—you know how Lucas can spin a story—and she got the idea to write them down. I think he got a kick out of being a hero.”

“Your mother. Abigail Wahl.”

“Yep.”

“Lucas’…wife?”

Abe nodded in lieu of answer. Henry fiddled with his cooling toast, finally letting it lie on the Delftware china plate that had been carefully set out for him. He wondered how long Abe had been up, waiting with patient consideration to answer Henry’s anticipated questions.

“Yet you call him ‘Uncle.’”

“Yeah, I do.” Abe shrugged. “It wasn’t your average marriage, in a lot of ways. When I was really little he was around full time, but as I got older, he did a lot of travelling. Uncle fit better I think, for him and me. Don’t know, I think it bothered Mom a little, but she gave up after a while.”

Henry remembered what Lucas had said the other night, his clumsy attempts to empathize with Henry when he’d spoken of Nora, and wondered if perhaps it wasn’t all as much garbage as he’d imagined it to be. Lucas was old enough to have been married to Abigail Wahl and had been around for Abe’s childhood. Abe was well into his seventies.

“How old is he?” Henry asked.

“Not as old as the Highlander, but older than Captain America.”

Henry and Abe looked over to find Lucas lurking in the doorway. He was wearing plaid pyjama pants and a t-shirt with a green emblem of some kind on it that Henry suspected had something to do with comic books. He was leaning on the door frame watching them.

Neither the Highlander nor Captain America meant anything to Henry, but he wasn’t about to say so. Lucas caught his confusion nonetheless and gave an exaggerated sigh.

 _“Seriously?_ I might give you a pass on the Highlander, but Captain America? Who doesn’t know Captain America these days?” Lucas came to sit with them at the table, slouching in his chair with disregard for table manners. “Never mind. It’s not important. I mean, it _is_ a travesty against basic cultural literacy, but I guess it’s…uh. Well, it is what it is, so…”

Lucas clamped his mouth shut with determination, as though that were the only thing bound to stop him from talking. He sat up and leaned across Henry to pop in a slice of bread in the toaster. His hand was shaking. He’d come in swinging with bravado, catching Henry off-guard, but he was nervous.

“How old are you?” Henry asked. Too blunt by half, but his thoughts were a mess of questions that he wanted the answers to all at once.

“Two hundred and thirty-five.” Lucas answered promptly, like the window to answer would close if he weren’t fast enough.

Henry checked with Abe, who was chewing his mouthful without so much as a whisper of incredulity in his attitude. Abe lifted an eyebrow, as though challenging Henry to disagree. Henry shook his head, half in denial, half in confusion.

“That’s surely not possible,” he said.

Lucas shrugged.

“It shouldn’t be, but it is. I’m the real live Energizer bunny—I keep going, and going, and going…”

Abe shifted and Lucas gave a whispered “Ow!” as Abe kicked him beneath the table. Abe jerked his head to the side, and Lucas angled his body towards Henry.

“Yeah, um. I’m really sorry about last night. I didn’t know you were going to be there. I haven’t told anyone about my, uh, my condition for a while, so I freaked out a little. Or a lot.”

Henry noted that the focus of Lucas’ concern was far more on the aftermath than his actual death. How many times had he died—and how many times at his own hand—for death to be such a casual acquaintance? For all that it didn’t last, it looked real. He’d felt Lucas’ cringing body, the stress on his heart and lungs, the shuddering agony of death.

All of that in a gesture of goodwill, in order to bend the unbendable rules that bound his hands as an agent of law and order.

Because Henry had thrown a temper tantrum in Lucas’ office, Lucas had chosen to endure all of this. He was not at fault for Lucas’ choices, but the haunting sense of responsibility was hard to shake.

It was disturbingly easy to believe it all. It fit too many of his insane theories, and lined up all the facts with tidy precision. Henry was accustomed to trusting his instincts. The impossibility of this situation had left him floundering for a time, but in the end it was reality coming up short, not his intuition. He’d never thought himself more reliable than the laws of nature. If he’d been judged insufferably prideful over his abilities before this, he was going to be a million times worse now.

The thought made him laugh aloud. Lucas cocked his head to the side.

“I have a great many questions,” Henry said by way of answer. “If you feel inclined to answer them.”

Lucas exchanged a look with Abe, and then nodded.

“Makes sense. Yeah, I…I guess I can try. Give me a minute to choke down a coffee and something to eat first. I’d prefer not to expose my secret identity on an empty stomach.”

 

***

 

When Henry said he had questions, he did not kid around. Like an interrogator grilling a suspect, Henry paced around the living room, hands clasped behind him, rattling off every conceivable question Lucas could imagine, and then some. Where he’d been born, where his immortality had begun, the nature of his revival, the specific points in history that Henry was familiar enough with to fact-check Lucas’ experiences and test his knowledge. That part was hampered by Lucas’ knowledge largely centring around pop cultural landmarks, whereas Henry had far more knowledge about the political and social events than Lucas had ever stopped to ponder.

“Are there others like you?” Henry asked.

“Not so far as I know, but it’s not like it comes up in conversation when you meet someone. Maybe there is. What’s so special about me that I just hang around for all this time? And just me? It’s hard to believe I’m the only one, but who knows?”

One of Henry’s thumbs tapped against the top of his laced hands, and he paced another circle around the living room coffee table, deep in thought.  Probably the last time someone had told Henry that there was no answer to a question, he’d spent the next week doing his damndest to prove that there was.

“Ah,” Henry said. He came to a halt and turned towards Lucas as though he’d finally found the answer he’d been looking for. “Your zombies.”

“What?”

“People rising from the dead. You said it was of special interest. I can see why.”

Lucas was stumped until he remembered the conversation on their way home from the dockside crime scene. He shifted in his chair under Henry’s keen gaze, which was laced with a gentle understanding that was even more uncomfortable than his curious scrutiny.

“Do you ever want it to end?” Henry asked finally.

Lucas forced himself to think on it rather than deflect the question.

“Sometimes. I didn’t know what I supposed to do for a while, because if I was stuck like this, there had to be a reason, right? Then I realized it wasn’t like I had a mission or anything. What is _anyone_ supposed to do, even when they’ve only got seventy or eighty years? You live your life, you do your thing, you make the most of it. Sometimes I get back to that place though, wondering what the hell is the point, why it’s me, why there isn’t anyone else like me. But then there’s also times when I feel like I have everything I need. I think I’m finding my stride again.”

It had taken a good twenty years, but in the last few months the world was more alive than it had been since Abigail dragged him from the vantage point of distant observer to the role of participant. She’d made him the main character in his own life once again, and he’d slipped away from that when she was gone. Henry was making him remember how. It was uncomfortable, but good.

“I don’t know that I’d handle it as well as that,” Henry said, breaking up Lucas’ thoughts.

“You never can tell until life throws you in the deep end. I bet you’d be pretty good at immortality. Imagine if you had centuries to practice all those observational skills of yours. You’d be unstoppable.”

Henry laughed and tipped his head in amused thanks.

“You really do remember a lot of stuff, don’t you?” Lucas asked. “Seems like everything goes in there and rattles around.”

“I have an excellent memory, yes.”

An excellent memory, and an equally excellent ability to process all these little bits and pieces and draw a good picture. Lucas used to love that people read his exploits as Bertie, that he got to be a character people enjoyed. It never really bothered him that tidbits about him were scattered across the world in the minds of readers. To be inspected and known without that filter… It was an uncomfortable level of familiarity, and one he couldn’t remember feeling since those first days and weeks getting to know Abigail, during sneaky conversations held in the medical camp, where there was virtually no privacy.

At least then they’d had Abe, your average little baby bent on continuous interruption, to keep things from getting too serious. Here, it was only him and Henry.

Speaking of Abe… Lucas twisted in his chair, but Abe was nowhere to be seen. Figured, he had a way of ditching Lucas high and dry when it came to Henry. Abe’s strategic retreats were becoming an art form.

“You’re taking this all pretty well,” Lucas said, turning reluctantly back to Henry.

Henry sighed and rubbed a hand through his unruly hair. He’d gone to splash his face with cold water, but he’d been too urgently curious to do more than that, and so he’d been delivering his barrage of questions with his shirt untucked, tie hanging loose around his neck and vest undone, looking like a businessman who’d been rolled in an alley for his wallet and left to stagger his way home. He still had all that bright and sharp intelligence and grace, even disordered. You could probably dress Henry Morgan in nothing but a pizza box and he’d still manage to have more dignity than Lucas ever dredged up. Some people were born with it. A few centuries more to practice, maybe Lucas could probably figure it out, or learn to fake it well enough.

“That may be a charitable interpretation of my current state,” Henry said, and finally flopped down on the couch. He’d finally worn himself out with all his pacing, and he sank into the couch cushions, tension bleeding out of him, curiously more relaxed than Lucas had ever seen him. “However, I saw what I saw. I try not to entertain confirmation bias, even in circumstances such as these.”

“That’s, uh—very scientific of you.”

“Science would have to rewrite itself to accommodate you.” Henry smiled at him as he put his feet on the table and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Can’t even _see_ the rail lines from the forest path, what with all the rules you break.”

“It’s an interesting life,” Lucas agreed.

Henry laced his fingers together across his stomach, intently studying Lucas. His gaze wandered down to the table between them, where Abigail’s book still lay from the night before. His smile faded.

“How much of it is true?” he asked, eyes flicking back to Lucas.

“A lot,” he said. “She had fun with Bertie’s stories over the years. So did I. He was the guy who lived out all my best times. This one, though,” he said as he leaned forward and picked up the book. The artist had rendered a drawing that was so like Abigail in her youth, but not quite. “I didn’t know she wrote this one until after she was gone. I never got to ask her if this is how she really saw me, or if this was our life as Bertie would have lived it. I wish I could have asked her.”

Henry’s gaze turned inward as he absorbed what Lucas had said. It was a little weird having someone hear and understand what he was saying. ‘Course, Lucas rarely said anything important, so the whole situation was a curveball.

“I am certain that regardless of what names were used, she cared a great deal for you. I think there is far less of Bertie and far more of Lucas in this story.” Henry swallowed, avoiding Lucas’ eye. “It sounded like a good life. It’s the kind of life I’d thought I’d have. It’s what I wanted more than anything.”

“What did she want?”

“For me to be someone else. Someone I stopped being a long time ago.”

“Then what you wanted never really existed.”

“You and Abigail—“

“Me and Abby, it was what we both wanted. It wasn’t planned, we didn’t force it, we just…grew into each other, I guess. Either of us, we always told each other we didn’t owe each other anything, that if it stopped being enough, we could move on. We never did, but I couldn’t have made that choice for her.”

Henry sunk into his seat with a guilty air, and Lucas knew he’d guessed right. Henry was a guy with ideas and plans, used to being able to make things happened the way he wanted.

“Gotta roll with the punches, even when they hurt.”

“Some hurt much worse than others,” Henry said quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, they do.”

They sat in quiet understanding for a moment, until Lucas couldn’t take the heavy mood any longer.

“Hey, look at it this way. All these experiences led you to be the person you are now, and look at you. I think you’re a pretty cool guy.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed and he shifted in his chair, a casual movement that adjusted the line of his body and the tilt of his head in such a way that for a moment, he was the slick and calculated flirt who played people so easily. He wet his lips, considering, and then he laughed lightly with a shake of his head. He relaxed again, and Lucas had the distinct impression that Henry had been on the edge of slamming a door in his face, but decided against it.

“You’re ‘pretty cool’ yourself, Lucas,” he said, his tone amused and warm.

“Don’t be fooled, I’m not half this stuff,” Lucas said, tossing the book to the table.

“I didn’t mean Bertie. I meant you, as you are.”

It shouldn’t have meant so much to him, but it did. Damn, he was really fond of the guy.

“Thanks, Henry.”

Henry sighed, dropping his feet to the floor.

“It sounds like Abigail was a good person.”

“The best,” Lucas confirmed. “The very best. I think you would have liked her. I know she would have liked you. She had a way of bringing people together. She made me and Abe family. If she’d had a chance, you would have been roped in too—she didn’t hold with people being on their own.”

Henry closed his mouth, and his heavy swallow spoke of thick emotion. He looked away from Lucas, and Lucas considered a joke to ease the moment, but this time he let it lie. Sometimes it was ok to let the truth strike home.

 _“See? You’re learning, darling,”_ he could almost hear Abigail say, and the phantom feel of her kiss on his cheek.

 


	15. Happily Ever After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit. It's done. This was a real effort of love, and I sincerely thank everyone who's helped me with it - binz, shiplizard, bearholdingashark, pinkelephant5, birdthatlookslikeastick, and anyone else I've forgotten to mention. Thanks for helping me reason it out, and keeping me motivated to finish. Charmingwolf, sorry I completely bastardized your prompt.
> 
> Also, dear readers: if you read this beast, with all its odd structure and parallel storytelling and rare pairings and total AU premise... well, I love you more than words can say. Thank you so so much.
> 
> The amazing manip at the end is thanks to [vividstitch/Nagaem_C](http://vividstitch.tumblr.com/post/143339064343/wahl-family-london-april-1945-i-put-together), and I can't think her enough for bringing immortal!Lucas to life! I couldn't resist putting it together with Abigail's final note, it's such a perfect fit.

Henry held the phone to his ear and listened to the ticking tones of the connecting call. His cell phone was clunky and old-fashioned by rapidly changing technological standards, but still worked just as efficiently as when his mother had slipped it into his suitcase as he packed for his first term at Harrow in 2007.

Central Park was transitioning from monochrome greyscale into colour as the sun struggled upward. Henry’s only company at this hour were early morning joggers springing past, and intrepid pigeons in hope of a free breakfast, and he strolled along the quiet pathways as he made the call that was long overdue.

It was just after lunchtime in the UK, when his mother usually had an hour of flex time in her office. The ring tone buzzed twice more, and then the click of the connection.

_“Dr. Emily Morgan speaking.”_

He’d not heard her voice in so long, their only recent communications the few emails he’d deigned to return to her, that he choked for a moment at the sound.

_“Hello?”_

“Hi Mum. It’s Henry.”

_“Henry! Is everything alright?”_

Her tone slid from delight straight into urgent concern. Despite his nerves, he chuckled.

“I know I ring seldom enough that it seems cause for alarm, but no, everything is fine.” Her responding laughter was rich and easy, and he smiled to hear it. “I called to say hello.”

_“Thank you, darling. It’s good to hear your voice.”_

He leaned against the wrought iron rail girding the path around the reservoir, letting two joggers go past.

_“How is New York?”_

He looked around at the snaggle-tooth skyline of buildings stained with the first rays of the sun glinting off glass and steel, fringed by the silver-tinged frosty green buffer of Central Park. New York was showing off like a peacock with full plumage on display. Had he called her from the comforts of his living room, hemmed in by peeling wallpaper and worn shag carpeting, the filthy brick of the neighbouring building’s wall shining through his window, he might have had a harder time finding the truth in his answer.

“It’s very beautiful. I’ve been keeping busy with work, so I confess I haven’t taken full advantage of being here.”

 _“Why am I not surprised,”_ she said with gentle, loving reproach. _“Do you think you’ll be home for the holidays this year?”_

It was their second Christmas without his father. Last year had been a disaster; Edward had tried to fill the empty spot at the head of the table, bullying Elizabeth and William about their desire to be out visiting with friends while they were home, and finding nothing but fault with Henry’s every move until he lured Henry into a vicious argument that summarily ended Henry’s visit. He’d left without a backward glance.

“I’m not sure I’d add to the festivities,” he said.

He didn’t want to wave the rift in her face, but he and Edward had not spoken to each other since then, and as Edward had leapt into his father’s company with frightening zeal directly after the holiday, Henry suspected he and Edward had no peaceable future to look forward to.

 _“I think Edward would like to speak with you.”_ A pause. _“He’s dismantling Morgan Shipping International.”_

“What? Why?”

_“I think you know why. Your father left him with control of the company, and when Edward stepped in and found out everything…I believe he understood your actions a little better. Edward’s been fighting the board of directors over their ethical practices all year. Edward consulted me, and while ultimately there won’t be much left when all is said and done, we agreed that closing the company is for the best.”_

Henry’s hand ached from the cold metal railing. He’d assumed that there was no repairing the relationships he’d left behind in England, that it was a chapter of his life closed and done. He’d misjudged his brother, thinking he knew about the company’s weapons dealings and had carried on with them.

He’d passed swift judgment without listening to others. He should know better.

While all endings were not happy, they were all the start of a new story that was yet to begin. The swelling bubble of hope rising in his throat was near painful.

“Yes—yes, I think you’re right.”

_“If you do have the time, you’ll be welcome.”_

“Thank you, Mum.”

_“Are you sure everything is alright, Henry?”_

Henry had spent the last day trying vainly to process all that had happened. Great swaths of his world view had been shaken, and he still marvelled at the new picture he was confronted with. With every question he’d asked, Lucas had another story to tell of times, places, people long gone. Life’s passing seconds ticked louder and louder in Henry’s ear until he’d woken early this morning with an urgent need to hear his mother’s voice.

He wanted more than anything to hear her, to speak to her, to share with her. He’d leaned on his father to talk through his thoughts, share his fears and dreams with. With his mother, he'd taken their closeness for granted in his childhood, a closeness built by proximity and shared interests rather than confidence. It wasn’t as simple now, thousands of miles from each other as they were, with the wall he’d built around himself. He’d cut himself off from the good as well as the bad when he’d come to New York.

Others could knock, but only Henry could reopen the doors he’d barred shut.

He took a deep breath and let the confession free.

“Nora came to see me.”

_“Ah. I thought she might. Did it…did it go well?”_

He thought about lying or making a joke, but decided on honesty.

“No. No, it didn’t.”

_“I’m so sorry, Henry.”_

“I suppose as you said, it's for the best.” When Nora had spoken those words they had been a judgment, a sentence. Now they had the ring of truth. Like taking apart his father’s company, it was a difficult path to the right destination. “At least we can both move on properly.”

 _“That sounds wisest.”_ She sighed. _“I’m glad you’re alright. I’ve been so worried about you. I miss you terribly, darling.”_

“Me too. I love you, Mum.”

_“I love you too, Henry—we all do. I hope you know that.”_

He closed his eyes and accepted it. He’d grown so used to thinking of himself as alone, to seeing all that he’d lost, that it was hard to see the truth—he had people who loved about him and cared about him. He wasn’t the isolated island he’d thought himself to be.

He stuttered his way through his goodbyes as his mother extracted a promise from him to call again in a few weeks with his holiday plans, and tucked the cell phone in his pocket as he walked on.

The blue cashmere scarf his mother had given him bounced his hot breath back against his cheeks as he tucked his chin into its soft protection. Instead of a sole keepsake of a forgotten time, it felt like a lifeline.

 

***

 

**One Week Later**

“Careful, this one has some loose pieces.”

Henry looked up from his work bench to see an EMT offering Lucas a clipboard by the fridge room. At their side, a body bag lay on a stretcher. The body bag was misshapen and bulging on one side, and Lucas was sizing it up as he signed for the body. Once done, he thrust the clipboard back to the EMT, who gave the body bag one last shuddering look before departing.

Lucas was tugging open the body bag zipper as soon as the EMT turned away, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. Henry was too curious and left his station to investigate.

“Ooh, decapitation. Now there’s one we don’t get every day.” He pulled the bag open wider, peering down into it.

“May I have a look?”

“Oh yeah, be my guest,” Lucas said, and waved his hands over the body like a magician presenting his trick. “Tell us what you see, O Guru of Death.”

Henry peered in at the exposed headless body. The head had rattled around during transport and come to rest tucked under one arm like a football. The expression, if he had to assign one, was of utter surprise.

“What a way to go,” he murmured to himself. He leaned forward, examining the wound. “It looks cleanly done. Must have been a sharp implement, with remarkable power behind it.”

“Fast and clean? Not too bad, then. It’s a little weird seeing your body for that second or two before your brain dies, but it doesn’t actually hurt. You’re dead before your nerves catch up with what’s happened.”

Lucas zipped up the body bag as he spoke, and Henry gaped at him.

“Are you saying that you’ve—” Henry cut himself off, glancing around them. This was hardly the venue for such discussions of Lucas’ immortality. He gulped down the faint unease. Despite his attempts to accept and treat Lucas’ immortality as a fact, the associated realities of his experiences were often unsettling.

Lucas winked at him and pointed two fingers at him like he was shooting guns. It was so inappropriate to the gravity of the situation that Henry snorted a disbelieving laugh.

“You’re impossible, Lucas.”

“That, my friend, is literally true. But hey, how many people do this job with as much hands-on knowledge as I’ve got? I might as well put my skills to use. But you know, Henry, you’ve got a knack. If you ever consider pursuing the esteemed career path of medical examiner, you probably would have a job.  If you wanted it,” Lucas said, quickly adding the end bit, as though he’d overstepped his bounds. “Just saying.”

“I have some time to consider it.  I’d always expected to continue on into residency, to work as a physician with people, and…” His goal of joining Doctors Without Borders came to mind again, and the desire to undo the legacy his father had left in so many countries. Knowing that Edward was fighting for change as well had helped him feel less alone in his obligation, but he still felt he had a familial duty to make things better with the skills he had. “It’s a long story, but I have certain things I need to do.”

“A man with a mission. I can respect that,” Lucas said. He wheeled the stretcher into the room full of fridges for the dead bodies and spoke over his shoulder. “See? You’re not a guy who wastes the life you’re given. That’s awesome. I could learn a few things from you, dude.”

Henry blinked at him, at the idea of a person with centuries of experience under his belt could have things to learn from him, especially when he felt his life to this point was a series of blind movements in the dark. Rather than solve his problems, he’d made a fine art of running away. When forced to face his past, he made his mistakes over again.

Nora was still a sore ache in his chest, though as he’d told his mother, their ending was complete this time. Rather than festering, this wound would heal. Lucas had been right, the future he’d mourned losing with her would never have existed. He couldn’t live a happy life for two all by himself.

Maybe he was learning. Slowly.

Abe and Lucas had taken pity on him and his sorry state, and several times over the past week he’d been welcomed in for dinner after work.

No matter how many questions Henry asked, Lucas never ran out of new and surprising answers. Sometimes Lucas’ stories would flow into tales that Henry remembered from the Bertie Bruce books, and Henry would be able to dictate the following events. Lucas would laugh and correct the things that were fanciful exaggerations, and would lean over and give him a high-five of approval when he called it correctly.

Lucas had been frank and open about his life with Abigail, a love that had indeed been the kind he’d dreamed of with Nora, no less meaningful or real for the fact that they hadn’t ever been lovers. It was something of a relief to know that there was precedence for the love he’d felt for her, though he’d had no name for it.

They were joyful evenings, and for the first time that Henry could remember in ages, he wasn’t lonely.

He had a great deal to learn from Lucas in return. A man who could live as long as Lucas had and still be content, still find joy in new experiences, stories, the people around him—yes, Henry would do well to learn that. Cultivating a jaded heart held no appeal.

“I was about to take a break,” Henry said on impulse. “Would you care to grab coffee with me?”

Lucas goggled at him in surprise, and then immediately struck an exaggerated pose of indifference.

“Yeah, sounds good,” he said. “Just let me get this guy in the fridge.”

He wheeled away the stretcher while Henry shook his head in fond amusement. Lucas, in so many ways, was like an overgrown child.

His crush on Henry lingered, sweetly harmless and clumsy. Though Lucas still bumbled his way awkwardly through social interactions, though he was easy to fluster with flirting charm, Lucas’ interest was a little less harmless now that Henry knew him better. He’d thought Lucas inept for how he wore his feelings on his sleeve, easily manipulated for how much he gave away, but now he wondered who between them truly was the wiser and who the more naive. Lucas, for all that he hid away about himself, was honest. Henry wondered if he could say the same about himself anymore.

Henry resolved himself to be more genuine in his interactions with Lucas. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to honestly gauge his interest in someone else, rather than focusing on what he could make them feel towards him.

He liked Lucas, but the very concept of him was intimidating. He called to mind those childhood musings when he’d read the _Bertie Bruce_ books as a youngster, of the life of an immortal stretching far longer than a man could live, the terror of leaving behind those you love as you moved on.

Of course, one did not require immortality to lose loved ones. He’d learned that lesson vividly.

Lucas reappeared and Henry shook off his musings, giving Lucas a bright smile, which Lucas returned equally. They left the morgue.

“Have you considered researching your, er, condition?” Henry asked as they walked down the sidewalk towards the coffee shop a block away from the OCME.

Lucas shrugged, shoving his hands in his pants pockets.

“I’ve done that a little.  Kind of poked away at it for about five years after I finished my med degree.  Know what I learned?”

“What?”

“I—and this is the only time you’ll ever hear anyone say this about me,” Lucas said as he leaned over towards Henry, “am perfectly normal.  Not a gene out of place.  Nothing to see here but a body that takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Henry frowned in thought, and Lucas laughed humourlessly.

“Yeah, I know.  It doesn’t seem right, but that’s all I’ve got.  For now, I try not to think about it. I could dwell on all the bad stuff, but I’d get sucked down by it all. There are a lot more fun things to concentrate on. Maybe I get a bit lost in all the silly stuff in life, but whatever gets you through the rough patches, right? There’s worse things than movie marathons.” He scratched his chin. “As long as it’s not all there is to life, I mean, which is tempting, sometimes. Bad habits, they can happen over time.”

“Balance is difficult to find,” Henry agreed, responding in a similarly quiet voice, barely heard above the street traffic noise. He had his own bad habits to confront, and a world to stop avoiding. He understood Lucas’ point a little too well.

“Yeah. Anyway, thanks for shaking things up. I think I needed it.”

Henry smiled.

“The same to you, Lucas.”

Lucas bumped Henry’s shoulder against his with a grin, and they crossed the street together.

As they passed a building, Lucas stared up at it with an irritated sigh. At Henry’s look of askance, he pointed to the sign.

“That’s our lab testing site. The ones we’re still hounding for our poison testing. One more week, they said, and Detective Martinez is getting really antsy.”

“Ah,” Henry said. The case still rankled, left dangling as it was. “Most irritating.”

“Yeah, to put it lightly. I was so distracted with you busting into my office I forgot to write down any of my observations, so I still don’t know what kind of poison it was.”

“So sorry to muck up your terribly scientific trials,” he said dryly. “Honestly, Lucas, what was that? No pulse rate or blood pressure monitors, nothing. If it were me, I’d have had a full monitoring setup so as to better understand the results, not to mention external observation…”

He swivelled around when he realized that Lucas had come to a stop a few paces back. Lucas’ mouth and eyes were round as he gaped at Henry. It morphed into growing excitement as Lucas started to bounce a little on his feet, his enthusiasm for whatever had just occurred to him taking over his whole body.

“What?”

“Henry, just hear me out.”

He narrowed his eyes. He’d learned to recognize this particular tone of Lucas’, one that indicated harebrained lunacy was to follow.

“Lucas, what is it?”

“Well, there was nothing wrong with my idea to start with, it just was interrupted. And you’ve got some solid ideas on the whole monitoring and observing end of things—let’s face it, you’re probably better at that stuff than I am. And it’s still another week before those lab results come in, but if we can push Detective Martinez the right way, she could get a jump on the investigation, and when the lab confirms it…”

Henry blinked, stupefied.

“Are you… are you asking me to murder you?”

“Only temporarily.”

Henry stared at Lucas blankly. Lucas grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

“Whadya think?”

Surely not. He couldn’t—could he? The idea was oddly fascinating, which made him wonder at his own sanity.

“I feel like I should say no,” Henry said.

“But you’re gonna say yes?” Lucas asked hopefully.

He couldn’t believe he was going to say yes. It was madness to treat death as such a casual thing. And yet… Henry had never liked an unsolved mystery. What greater mystery was there than death, especially one that never stuck?

He raised a warning finger, fixing Lucas with a stern look.

“I get to plan and supervise the circumstances.”

“Absolutely.” Lucas nodded seriously.

“No unnecessary cruelty. I understand that you die, but the pain of the event is real.”

“Yep.”

Lucas was worryingly excited for someone who was discussing the circumstances of his own upcoming demise. He grinned at Henry with blinding enthusiasm.

“I’ll want to record my observations,” Henry said. “Though you’ve done research on your condition, I could provide you with further perspectives, perhaps things you haven’t considered.”

Lucas took that in, and then nodded, his enthusiasm dulled, but still sincere.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

Henry took a steadying breath, and then stuck out his hand to Lucas. Lucas took it, shaking it firmly.

“Well then,” Henry said. “To the start of a most unusual adventure.”

Lucas slung an arm around Henry’s shoulders and gripped him in a crushing side-hug firm enough to squash him into Lucas’ ribs. He bore it with as good grace as he could until Lucas released him, and he was able to straighten his tie and jacket to proper alignment. Lucas was already imagining the route before them, his hands squared up as though framing a picture.

“Hell yeah, we got this. Here I was thinking you were the Batman to my Superman, but maybe you’re more, like—like the Igor to my Frankenstein.”

“ _Igor_?” Henry protested, finally having recognized at least one of Lucas’ cultural references—and not finding it a flattering one. “And Frankenstein? I hardly think that’s the connection you wish to draw when studying your condition. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes and Watson would be more apt.”

“That’s brilliant! You’d be a great Watson!”

“Lucas, _I’m_ Holmes.”

“What? Hey…”

They bickered good-naturedly as they entered the coffee shop and got their coffees, and then fell into discussions of how best to monitor the experiment.

This wasn’t what Henry had expected when he’d set out to find a new adventure in life, but the forest path had led him here.

He was willing to keep walking and see where it would take him.

 

***

 

 

> **_Epilogue_ **
> 
> _There are not many tales that end with a happily ever after. Bertie and I, we came as close as we could._
> 
> _Bertie, thank you entering my life, and for having me as part of yours. I know you will go on to have many more adventures, and even though I won’t be there to chronicle them, know that I will always love you. I have no doubt that yours will be the happily ever after you deserve._
> 
> _You are and have always been my hero._
> 
> _All my love,_
> 
> _A_


End file.
